Ned Buntline, the famous pseudonym of Edward Zane Carroll Judson, was "the patriarch of blood-and-thunder romancers," according to Henry Nash Smith in Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (1950). He has often been called the originator of the dime novel, and while that is probably an excessive claim, Buntline certainly was an early major dime novelist and one of the most prolific. During a literary career that lasted more than forty years he turned out reams of thrilling tales. In addition to the 130 separately published books listed in the bibliography, he wrote hundreds of short stories and essays for periodicals. In addition to the pseudonym of Buntline, he wrote on occasion as Charlie Bowline, Jack Brace, Captain Cleighmore, Frank Clewline, Henry Edwards, Jiles Edwards, Clew Garner, Edward J. C. Handelboe, Mad Jack, L. Augustus Jones, Edward Minturn, and Harrison Gray Buchanan. A participant in the Seminole...