Gilbert Patten
It is difficult now to fully appreciate the influence Patten’s Merriwell series had on the youth of that day. His writing ended one hundred ten years ago. Because most was printed on cheap paper, and “read to tatters” much of the work now survives only in special collections. The exploits of Frank Merriwell, an honest, ethical, accomplished, and caring boy who grew to manhood in the series is lost as memory of the time fades away.
Perhaps the best way to understand his influence is through the words of an avid reader who lived then. In an article in the Boston Sunday Post “Your World” for April 22, 1945 the writer Wendell Hazen said Pattern was, “The man who took me through prep. school, who took me through college, who taught me the wonders of baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and track, who carried me on fascinating vacation trips spanning the continent, who taught me good sportsmanship and fine manly habits of courage, honesty and perseverance…” [7]
Hazen said he was one of “the great legion of boys who for nearly twenty years read with eagerness each successive weekly issue… It is difficult today, with the vast store of reading matter available, to realize just what these simple, homely stories of one boy’s life and adventures, meant to us youngsters of that faraway era.” [7]
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