Sabin, Edwin L
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1870-1952) US author and historian best known for his heavily researched boys' adventure novels. He began as a journalist with a penchant for poetry and his early fiction is light-hearted, almost presaging P G Wodehouse in its eccentricity. The Magic Mashie and Other Golfish Stories (coll 1902) is a volume of humorous golfing stories a few of which verge on the fantastic, such as "The Supersensitive Golf-Ball" about a golf-ball that reacts to the player's emotions (see Games and Sports). A trip to the Bahamas inspired "The Bones in the Cave" (April 1909 Blue Book) in which a record is discovered of the island's natives' view of the arrival of European explorers and of a curse upon their descendants. An increasing fascination for the history of the United States and in particular the Old West led Sabin to write many novels set in the pioneering days that were renowned for their authentic detail. Only rarely did Sabin set his imagination free. His novel, The City of the Sun (1924), is a Lost World tale set in Northern Mexico in the nineteenth-century, where a beautiful Spanish maiden must be rescued from ritual death in the maw of a great snake; the eponymous ancient Aztec city is, as usual in novels of this sort, destroyed. His earlier short story, "The Devil of the Picuris" (November 1921 Blue Book) has a similar milieu and features what might be a surviving pterodactyl (see Dinosaurs). [MA/JC]
Edwin Legrand Sabin
born Rockford, Illinois: 23 December 1870
died Hemet, California: 24 November 1952
works (selected)
- The City of the Sun (Philadelphia: George W Jacobs and Company, 1924) [hb/]
collections
- The Magic Mashie and Other Golfish Stories (New York: A Wessels, 1902) [hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry