American drama critic George Jean Nathan once expressed a hope in a Suggestion for a Biography for "The American Mercury: " A book I should like to read and doubtless there are thousands of ex-youngsters of the 1800 s and early 1890 s who have the same feeling about it as I have would be a biography, or better still an autobiography, if he is still living, of the man known as Burt Standish, author of the famous Frank Merriwell literature. Who was this Standish; whence came he; what was his history?
Now, nineteen years after his death and thirty-four years after Nathan expressed his wish,...