Лео Эдвардс: Американский писатель детской литературы

American novelist

Edward Edson Lee (September 2, 1884 – September 28, 1944), who wrote under the pen name of Leo Edwards, was a popular children's literature author in the 1920s and 1930s.

Lee had a difficult childhood, dropping out of school to go to work in his early teens. He got his start as a writer writing serialized stories, most notably in The American Boy magazine. His first book, Andy Blake in Advertising, was published in 1922 (reprinted in 1928 as the first volume in the Andy Blake series). He wrote five series of books: the Jerry Todd series of sixteen books; the Poppy Ott series of eleven books; the Trigger Berg series of four books; the Andy Blake series of four books; and the Tuffy Bean series of four books. All of the series were interrelated in some way; the Todd and Ott stories took place in the town of Tutter, Illinois, a fictional town modeled on the town of Utica, which Lee experienced in his childhood. The supporting characters in the Todd and Ott books — "Red" Meyers, "Scoop" Ellery, and "Peg" Shaw — were real boys that Lee befriended around the time he began writing the stories while living in Shelby, Ohio. Edward Edson Lee is buried in Beloit, Wisconsin.

Initially forgotten after his death, Lee's books (most of them graced by the gaudy and idiosyncratic illustrations of Bert Salg) have become highly valued by juvenile book collectors. The end of each Jerry Todd book had the unusual feature of printed letters from readers and Lee's warm, informal responses to them. This tradition — and intimate tone — was later imitated by Marvel Comics editor/publisher Stan Lee (no relation) in the "Marvel Bullpen Bulletins" pages printed in the pages of all Marvel comics. The 1990s power pop band Cockeyed Ghost took its name from one of Edwards' more obscure books, Trigger Berg and the Cock Eyed Ghost. In his autobiography, "Where's the Rest of Me?" Ronald Reagan wrote that, growing up in Tampico, Illinois, he had a boyhood much like Jerry Todd.