Walt Coburn

Walt Coburn (1889-1971) was an American writer of Westerns. Coburn was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana Territory, the son of Robert Coburn Senior, the founder of the noted Circle C Ranch.[1]

Coburn served in the military in the First World War. He later spent time as a cowboy and a surveyor, before becoming a full-time writer in the 1920s.

Western author

Coburn began his career with Western stories in general fiction pulp magazines such as Adventure and Argosy.[2] Later Coburn moved on to pulps specializing in Westerns, including Western Story Magazine, Lariat Story Magazine, Ace-High Western and Frontier Stories.[3] He often wrote for the Fiction House pulp magazines Dime Western and Star Western who promoted Coburn as "the Cowboy Author".[4]

Coburn was enormously prolific; Flanagan states Coburn wrote almost two million words of fiction over a thirty year period.[1] Coburn was so popular that eventually, two pulp magazines - Walt Coburn’s Western Magazine and Walt Coburn’s Action Novels were issued, consisting mainly of reprints of Coburn's work.[2]

After the pulps ended in the 1950s, Coburn switched his focus to writing paperback originals.[2]

Coburn was a devout Christian. Coburn claimed, in his posthumously published autobiography Western Word Wrangler (1973) that God had chosen him to spread the Christian message through his fiction.[1]

Bibliography

Novels

Non-fiction

References

  1. 1 2 3 John D. Flanagan, "Coburn, Walt", in Twentieth Century Western Writers, edited by Geoff Sadler. St. James Press, 1991, ISBN 0-912289-98-8 , (pp. 129-34)
  2. 1 2 3 Lee Server, "Coburn, Walt" in Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers. Facts on File, 2002 ISBN 978-0-8160-4578-5 (pp. 65-66)
  3. ↑ Jon Tuska, The Western Story: A Chronological Treasury, University of Nebraska Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-8032-9439-4 (p.xxviii).
  4. ↑ Jon Tuska, Star Western, Gramercy Books, 1995, ISBN 0-517-14688-6 (p.132).
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