Richard Archer

Writing as Richard Archer, James F. Bowman is best remembered for The Island Home; or, The Adventures of Six Young Crusoes. Sources on that book identify Richard Archer as one of Bowman's pseudonyms, and Bowman himself is documented as an American journalist, poet, and writer.

Bowman worked for newspapers in Placerville, Sacramento, and San Francisco over a career that lasted about twenty-four years. He was also a co-founder of the Bohemian Club, and accounts of his life note friendships with prominent literary and artistic figures in San Francisco, giving him a place in the cultural world that surrounded western American journalism in the 19th century.

There is one small uncertainty in the record: some book listings connect the pseudonym Richard Archer with a death year of 1883, while the biographical sources found for James F. Bowman give April 29, 1882 as his date of death. Because of that mismatch, it is safest to say that Richard Archer was a pen name used by Bowman, rather than to repeat the 1883 date without qualification.