Walter Noble Burns

Born in Lebanon, Kentucky, in 1872, Walter Noble Burns worked as a journalist before becoming a widely read writer of Western history and fiction. Sources from the University of New Mexico Press and the University of Arizona describe him as a newspaperman and author whose career grew out of reporting and historical writing.

He is most closely associated with The Saga of Billy the Kid (1926), the bestselling book that made his name, along with Tombstone: An Iliad of the Southwest and The Robin Hood of El Dorado, about Joaquin Murrieta. His writing helped popularize some of the most enduring figures of the American West by blending research, narrative drive, and a strong feel for legend.

Burns died in 1932. Even now, he remains an important early popularizer of Western history, especially for readers interested in the borderland between documented fact and the myths that grew around it.