The novel The Adventures of Kathlyn was also a serial film, produced as thirteen episodes and starring Kathlyn Williams. MacGrath wrote both simultaneously, timing things so the novel would be in the bookstores when the serial was running. The serial was only the second serial made by an American company, and the first of the "cliffhanger" style that became popular over the next decade. It was popular enough to spawn a feature-length film a couple of years later with the same title and largely the same cast. Harold MacGrath was known for writing novels, short-stories, and even screenplays for the then-nascent movie industry. He wrote at least a novel a year, had short stories in the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies' Home Journal, and became one of the first well-known writers to work in film.!

Author Biography

Harold MacGrath (1871 - 1932) was a bestselling American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter. Also known occasionally as Harold McGrath, he was born in Syracuse, New York. As a young man, he worked as a reporter and columnist for the Syracuse Herald newspaper until the late 1890s when he published his first novel, a romance titled Arms and the Woman. According to the New York Times, his next book, The Puppet Crown, was the No.7 bestselling book in the United States for all of 1901. MacGrath subsequently wrote novels for the mass market about love, adventure, mystery, spies and the like at an average rate of more than one a year. He would have three more of his books that were among the top ten bestselling books of the year. At the same time, he published a number of short stories for major American magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal and Red Book magazine. Several of MacGrath's novels were serialized in these magazines and contributing to them was something he would continue to do until his death in 1932.