Years active 1900–1932 | Movies Billy the Kid | |
Occupation HistorianAuthorResearcherJournalist Died 15 April 1932, Chicago, Illinois, United States Books The saga of Billy the Kid, Tombstone, A Year with a Whaler, The Robin Hood of El Dorado, A Year with a Whaler ‑ Scholar's Similar Billy the Kid, Gene Fowler, Frank Borzage, Leonard Smith | ||
Walter Noble Burns (1866–1932) was a writer of Western history and a Western fiction author, notable for his book, The Saga of Billy the Kid (1926).
Contents
Family
Born on October 24, 1866 in Lebanon, Kentucky, he was the son of Thomas E. Burns (1837–1908), a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Walter's mother, Mary Crisella Noble (1847–1871) had died when he was four years old. He married Rose Marie Hoke on 10 November 1902.
Career
Walter Noble Burns served with the 1st Kentucky Infantry during the Spanish–American War in 1898. In 1900, he moved to Chicago, Illinois and began a career as a journalist, literary critic and crime reporter. After World War I, Burns retired as a reporter, then concentrated his writing about Western American legends.
Publications
Biography
Mark J. Dworkin (1946–2012) compiled a biography about Walter Noble Burns, entitled American Mythmaker: Walter Noble Burns and the Legends of Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, and Joaquín Murrieta. Dworkin died in 2012, prior to the completion of this book, which was published in 2015 by the University of Oklahoma Press.