Philip Verrill Mighels

Philip Verrill Mighels was an American writer and novelist born in Carson City, Nevada, on April 19, 1869. Raised in a family of journalists, he trained in law and passed the Nevada bar in 1890, but soon turned to journalism and fiction instead. His writing career carried him from San Francisco to New York, and for a time he also lived in London with his wife, the author Ella Sterling Mighels.

He became known for a remarkably wide range of work. Alongside poems and short stories, he published novels about desert mining camps and Western life, including Bruvver Jim’s Baby and The Furnace of Gold, works often associated with the Sagebrush School of American literature. He also wrote adventure stories, political commentary, detective fiction under the pen name Jack Steele, and speculative fiction such as The Crystal Sceptre.

Mighels published widely in major magazines and newspapers of his day, including Harper's, The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and McClure's. His life ended suddenly in 1911 after an accidental gunshot while researching a cattle round-up in Nevada. Though he died at just 42, his fiction continued to circulate afterward, and some of his stories were later adapted for silent film.