Lewis (1855-1914) was an American investigative journalist, lawyer, novelist, editor and short story writer. He began his career as a staff writer at the Chicago Times and eventually worked his way up to editor of the Chicago Times-Herald. By the late 19th century he was writing muckraker articles for Cosmopolitan and as an investigative journalist he wrote extensively about corruption in New York politics, including a biography published in 1901 of Richard Croker, a leading figure in the corrupt political machine known as Tammany Hall which exercised considerable control over New York politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. As a writer of genre fiction he had his greatest success with his collections of Wolfville western stories which he continued writing until his death. This first collection portraying Episodes of a Cowboy LIfe and introducing such characters as the Old Cattleman, Doc Peets and Faro Nell was published in 1897.