Robert Alexander Wason

Born in Toledo, Ohio, on April 6, 1874, Robert Alexander Wason became an American novelist and short-story writer whose work was especially associated with Western themes. He attended high school in Delphi, Indiana, and before turning fully to writing he worked in a wide range of jobs, including clerking for his father, serving as an office boy, working on San Francisco's cable car system, mining in Nevada, and farming in Indiana.

That broad experience seems to have fed directly into his fiction. Sources describe him as a writer who often used material from his own life, and his books include titles such as Happy Hawkins, Friar Tuck, The Knight Errant, and And Then Came Jean. He also wrote shorter fiction and serial work, and the science-fiction reference source The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction notes his serial The Man Who Never Died as a notable outlier from his mostly Western output.

Wason married Emma Louise Brownell in 1911, and they had three children. He died in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, on May 11, 1955. Several of his works remain accessible through public-domain collections, which has helped keep his name alive for modern readers interested in classic popular fiction.