Mayne Reid: A Memoir of his Life

The memoir recounts the subject's upbringing in northern Ireland, family influences, and early education intended for the ministry, which he abandoned in favor of emigration to America. It follows his restless years in the United States: odd jobs, frontier adventures with trappers and encounters on the prairies, experiments as teacher, performer, and editor, and eventual emergence as a popular writer and man of action. Anecdotes include his reflections on literary life, a personal defense of Edgar Allan Poe, and episodes of military service and natural-history observation that informed his later romances and travel narratives.