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William Wallace Cook
1867–1933
A prolific storyteller of the dime-novel and pulp era, he wrote fast-moving westerns, adventures, and serial fiction for a mass audience. He is also remembered for Plotto, a story-plot guide that later became a curiosity for writers and readers alike.
2 Audiobooks
The Fiction Factory
by William Wallace Cook
Adrift in the Unknown; or, Queer Adventures in a Queer Realm
by William Wallace Cook
About the author
Born in 1867, William Wallace Cook was an American writer whose career stretched across dime novels, serials, popular magazine fiction, and dramatic writing. Archival and bibliographic sources describe him as a highly productive author of westerns, adventure stories, and other popular fiction, and note that he also wrote under the pen name John Milton Edwards.
Cook's name is especially linked with the world of commercial storytelling: he wrote for a broad reading public at a time when inexpensive fiction was booming in the United States. That mix of speed, invention, and popular appeal helps explain why his work still interests readers who enjoy early mass-market fiction and the history of pulp storytelling.
He is also known for Plotto, a plot-compilation book that outlived many of the magazines and formats of his own day. Cook died in 1933, but his career offers a vivid glimpse into the industrious, imaginative side of American popular literature.