The American world of 1918 was certainly ready for farce. America had just been through its First World War; more deadly, it would lose many thousands to the Great Flu Pandemic 1919. And so it welcomed Biltmore Oswald: The Diary of a Hapless Recruit and Out o' Luck: Biltmore Oswald Very Much at Sea, its sequel, published by Fredrick Stokes and Company. While editor he also published his poetry, which, like Edgar Allan Poe, he considered his true calling.