Richard Savage

Born in Utica, New York, in 1846, Richard Henry Savage built one of those lives that already sounds half like a novel. He graduated from West Point, served as a U.S. Army officer, and later worked in diplomatic and legal circles before becoming a full-time writer. That broad experience gave his fiction a lived-in sense of movement, risk, and high society.

Savage wrote more than forty books, many of them adventure and mystery novels loosely drawn from his own travels and experiences. He became especially well known for stories such as My Official Wife, and his work found a wide audience in the 1890s, when readers were eager for tales of international intrigue, romance, and suspense.

He died in 1903, but his fiction still offers a vivid look at the pace and style of popular storytelling in his era. If you enjoy historical adventure with a dramatic, worldly flair, Savage is an author worth discovering.