"Big hairy stories about big hairy men" is how one critic described the work of one of the early twentieth century's most prolific and successful popular writers, Rex Beach. He developed a devoted following among the reading public which remained loyal to his works into the mid-1930s. In addition, he led the way for later authors to reap greater profits by exploiting other media outlets for their works, thus defining what the twentieth-century author of popular literature became by mid-century—an independent entrepreneur.

Rex Ellingwood Beach was born in Atwater, Michigan, in 1877. At age twelve his family packed their belongings and sailed by raft down the Mississippi and across the Gulf of Mexico to Florida, where they took up residence on homesteaded land. Beach attended Rollins College at Winter Park but left shortly before graduation to move to Chicago. He read law in...