On the Plains with Custer Paperback - 2023

Edwin Legrand Sabin (December 23, 1870 - November 24, 1952) was an American author, primarily of Western adventure stories. Sabin was born in Rockford, Illinois to Henry Sabin and Esther Frances Hotchkiss Sabin, but grew up in Clinton, Iowa, where his father became superintendent of schools when Sabin was less than a year old. He worked for a number of newspapers in Iowa and Illinois. In October 1896, he married Mary Caroline Nash of Iowa, nine years younger than him, whom he met working in Chicago. Sabin began writing poetry and short stories for popular publications. His first book, The Magic Mashie and Other Golfish Stories (1902), was a collection of stories about golf. His second book was The Beaufort Chums (1905). Both books were unsuccessful, but the second began a long, fruitful relationship with the publisher Thomas Y. Crowell Co. From 1913 to 1931 he published dozens of critically acclaimed adventure books about the American West, many of them for Crowell's "Great West" and "Range and Trail" series or for the "Trail Blazers" series from J. B. Lippincott & Co. Though aimed at an audience of young adults, Sabin conducted copious research, even visiting institutions like the Bancroft Library and state historical societies and conducting interviews with people who had interacted with historical figures like Calamity Jane and George Armstrong Custer. His accurate background continue to make his books attractive to adults. The Great Depression spelled the end of Sabin's success as an author. He continued to be published sporadically, but royalties dwindled and his manuscripts began to be brusquely rejected by publishers. An attempt at establishing a correspondence school for novice writers failed. Financial circumstances forced the Sabins to move inland to Hemet, California. In 1952, he died a few months after his wife, a ward of Riverside County, California.