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Walt Coburn

Walter John Coburn (October 23, 1889 – May 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 located south of Malta.[1] The actress Dorothy Coburn is his niece.[2]

Coburn served in the Army aviation corps during the World War I era.[3] 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.[4] Later Coburn moved on to pulps specializing in Westerns, including Western Story Magazine, Lariat Story Magazine, Ace-High Western and Frontier Stories.[5] He often wrote for the Fiction House pulp magazines, which promoted Coburn as "the Cowboy Author".[6]

Coburn was enormously prolific; Flanagan states Coburn wrote almost two million words of fiction over a thirty year period.[1] Coburn at his most prolific, averaged over 600,000 published words per year.[7] He 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.[4]

After the pulps ended in the 1950s, Coburn switched his focus to writing paperback originals.[4]

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]

Coburn committed suicide at age 82 in Prescott, Arizona.[7]

Bibliography

Stories

Non-fiction

References

  1. ^ a b c John D. Flanagan, "Coburn, Walt", in Twentieth Century Western Writers, edited by Geoff Sadler. St. James Press, 1991, ISBN 0-912289-98-8 , (pages 129-34)
  2. ^ D'Ambrosio, Brian (2019). Montana Entertainers: Famous and Almost Forgotten. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing Inc. pp. 35–37. ISBN 9781439667330. OCLC 1107577282.
  3. ^ "Walter Coburn, Writer of "Westerns" Arrives Here", Tucson Daily Citizen, Tucson, Arizona, volume LXV, number 298, October 25, 1934, page 6.
  4. ^ a b c Lee Server, "Coburn, Walt" inEncyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers. Facts on File, 2002 ISBN 978-0-8160-4578-5 (pp. 65-66)
  5. ^ Jon Tuska, The Western Story: A Chronological Treasury, University of Nebraska Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-8032-9439-4 (page xxviii).
  6. ^ Jon Tuska, Star Western, Gramercy Books, 1995, ISBN 0-517-14688-6 (page 132).
  7. ^ a b "Walt Coburn Papers". Special Collections at the University of Arizona Libraries. University of Arizona. Retrieved 3 April 2017.