author
Richard Adams Locke
1800–1871
Best remembered for the sensational 1835 “Great Moon Hoax,” this English-born journalist helped shape the lively, competitive world of early American newspapers. His work mixed satire, curiosity, and sharp timing in ways that still make his name memorable.
1 Audiobook
The moon hoax : or, A discovery that the moon has a vast population of human beings
by Richard Adams Locke
About the author
Born in Somerset, England, in 1800, he built his career as a journalist and writer after moving to the United States. He is most closely associated with the New York Sun, where he wrote the series later known as the “Great Moon Hoax,” a set of articles that claimed new discoveries of life on the moon and became one of the most famous newspaper sensations of the 19th century.
Locke’s reputation rests on the strange mix of humor, science, and mass-media savvy in that episode. Later reference works describe him not only as a journalist and editor but also as a figure linked with early speculative writing, since the moon articles blurred the line between satire, popular science, and imaginative fiction.
He died in 1871, but his place in literary and newspaper history has lasted. Today he is remembered less for a large body of books than for one brilliantly audacious media event that captured the appetite of a growing reading public.