William R. (William Reynolds) Eyster

William Reynolds Eyster (1841–1918) was an American author, editor, teacher, and lawyer who wrote under his own name and the pen name R. Hunt Wilby. Born in Johnstown, New York, he was educated in New York and Pennsylvania, and later became closely associated with the lively world of 19th-century popular fiction.

Eyster is best remembered for his many dime novels and serial stories, including Free Trapper's Pass, Wild Nat, the Trooper, and The Luckless Trapper. His work often drew on frontier settings, danger, pursuit, and melodrama—the kind of storytelling that made cheap popular fiction so widely read in the late 1800s.

Alongside his writing, he also worked in education, journalism, and law. That mix of professions makes him an interesting example of the versatile literary figures who helped build America's mass-market reading culture before radio and film took over.