author
William Dixon Bell
1865–1951
A little-known American writer of boys' adventure stories, he mixed aerial action, lost worlds, and early space travel into fast-moving tales. His books now stand out as curious, imaginative examples of pulp-era juvenile fiction.
1 Audiobook
The Moon Colony
by William Dixon Bell
About the author
Born in Texas on May 10, 1865, William Dixon Bell was an American author whose surviving reputation rests mostly on a small run of adventure novels for younger readers. Reference sources agree that he died in Los Angeles, California, on December 8, 1951.
Bell wrote stories that combined the brisk pace of pulp adventure with speculative ideas. His best-known titles include The Lost Aviators (1924), The Moon Colony (1937), and The Sacred Scimiter (1938), and he also published cowboy short fiction in magazines around 1929 to 1931.
Today he is remembered less as a major literary figure than as an intriguing niche author. Readers interested in vintage juvenile fiction and early science-fiction adventure often find his work appealing for its enthusiasm, strange twists, and snapshot of popular storytelling between the pulp and prewar eras.