Edwin L. Sabin

Edwin Legrand Sabin (December 23, 1870 – November 24, 1952) was an American author, primarily of boys' adventure stories, mostly set in the American West.

Biography 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. Sabin's brother was the author Elbridge Hosmer Sabin.

Sabin worked for a number of newspapers in Iowa and Illinois: the Daily Herald in Clinton, the Des Moines Daily News, the Daily State Register, and the Daily Capital in Des Moines, Iowa, the Morning Democrat in Davenport, Iowa, the Peoria Herald, the Peoria Transcript, and the Peoria Journal in Peoria, Illinois, and Campbell's Weekly in Chicago, Illinois.

In October 1896, he married Mary Caroline Nash of Iowa, nine years younger than him, whom he met working in Chicago. His first book, The Magic Mashie and Other Goldfish Stories (1902), was a collection of stories about golf, a game that was new to the United States. It was published as one volume in 1914 and a two-volume, revised edition was published in 1935. Though widely praised by critics and considered a standard work on the subject, given the amount of time he devoted to the project it was a net financial loss for Sabin.

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.