Rival Pitchers of Oakdale

(George William) Gilbert Patten (1866-1945), who also wrote under the pseudonyms Morgan Scott and Burt L. Standish, was the American author of the Frank Merriwell stories. The model for all later American juvenile sports fiction, Merriwell excelled at football, baseball, crew and track at Yale while solving mysteries and righting wrongs. He played with great strength and received traumatic blows without injury. Merriwell originally appeared in a series of magazine stories starting April 18, 1896 (Frank Merriwell: or, First Days at Fardale) in Tip Top Weekly, continuing through 1912, and later in dime novels and comic books. Patten would confine himself to a hotel room for a week to write an entire story.