Thomas Mayne Reid

Reid was born in Ballyroney, a hamlet near Katesbridge, County Down, in present day Northern Ireland, the son of Rev. Thomas Mayne Reid Sr., who was a senior clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. His father wanted him to become a Presbyterian minister, and in September 1834 he enrolled at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He stayed for four years, but lacked motivation to complete his studies and graduate. He headed back to Ballyroney to teach at a school.

In December 1839 Reid boarded the Dumfriesshire, bound for New Orleans, Louisiana, arriving in January 1840 and soon finding a job as a corn factor's clerk in the corn market. After six months in New Orleans, he is said to have left for refusing to whip slaves. Reid later used Louisiana as the setting of one of his successful books, an anti-slavery novel entitled The Quadroon.

Reid then travelled to Tennessee, where on a plantation near Nashville he tutored the children of Dr. Peyton Robertson. Some twenty years later, Reid would make mid-Tennessee the setting for his novel The Wild Huntress. After Robertson's death, Reid founded a short-lived school in Nashville. In 1841 he found work as a clerk for a provision dealer in either Natchez, Mississippi, or Natchitoches, Louisiana (the latter seems likelier). Although Reid later claimed to have made several trips West in this period, on which he purportedly based some of his novels, the evidence for this is sketchy and confusing at best.

In late 1842 Reid arrived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he began writing prose and poetry for the Pittsburgh Morning Chronicle under a pen-name, the Poor Scholar. He also apparently worked as a carrier for the paper. His earliest verifiable work is a series of epic poems called Scenes in the West Indies.

In early 1843, Reid moved to Philadelphia for three years, working as a journalist and periodically publishing poetry in Godey's Lady's Book, Graham's Magazine, the Ladies National Magazine and elsewhere, still using his Pittsburgh pseudonym. There he met Edgar Allan Poe, who became a drinking companion for a time.[1] Poe would later call Reid "a colossal but most picturesque liar. He fibs on a surprising scale but with the finish of an artist, and that is why I listen to him attentively."[2]

When the Mexican–American War began in the spring of 1846, Reid worked as a correspondent for the New York Herald in Newport, Rhode Island, which would likewise be the setting for a novel. At the time added the pen-name Ecolier to the Poor Scholar.

On 23 November 1846, Reid joined the First New York Volunteer Infantry as a second lieutenant, leaving by ship with the regiment in January 1847. They camped for several weeks at Lobos Island before joining Major General Winfield Scott's invasion of Central Mexico, which began on 9 March at Vera Cruz. Reid as Ecolier was a correspondent for a New York paper, Spirit of the Times, which published his Sketches by a Skirmisher. On 13 September, at the Battle of Chapultepec, Reid received a severe thigh wound while leading a charge. He was afterward promoted to first lieutenant for bravery in battle. On 5 May 1848 he resigned his commission and in July returned to New York with his regiment.

Love's Martyr, Reid's first play, was staged at the Walnut Street Theater, Philadelphia, for five nights in October 1848. He published War Life, an account of his army service, on 27 June 1849.

Learning of the Bavarian Revolution, Reid headed for England to volunteer, but after the Atlantic crossing changed his mind and went home to Ireland instead. He soon moved to London and in 1850 published his first novel, The Rifle Rangers. This was followed by The Scalp Hunters (1851; dedicated to Commodore Edwin W. Moore, whom he met in 1841), The Desert Home (1852), and The Boy Hunters (1853). The last, set in Texas and Louisiana, was a "juvenile scientific travelogue" that become a favourite with young Theodore Roosevelt, who became a Reid fan. That year Reid married 15-year-old Elizabeth Hyde, daughter of his publisher, G. W. Hyde, an English aristocrat.

After time off with his new bride, Reid returned to writing. He continued to base his novels on his adventures in America. Several more were successful: The White Chief (1855), The Quadroon (1856), Osceola (1858) and The Headless Horseman (1865). He spent money freely, including building in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, a sprawling "Rancho", a reproduction of a Mexican hacienda he had seen during the Mexican–American War, where he took to farming. This extravagance led to bankruptcy in November 1866, from which he was discharged in January 1867. That October he left London for Newport, Rhode Island, hoping to repeat his past success in the U.S.. He went back to New York in 1867 and founded the Onward Magazine there.[3]

Reid lectured at Steinway Hall in New York and published the novel The Helpless Hand in 1868, but America proved less kind than earlier. His wound at Chapultepec started to bother him and he was hospitalized for several months at St Luke in 1870. His wife hated America. After his hospital discharge they returned to England on 22 October 1870, to live at Ross on Wye, Herefordshire.

Reid continued to write stories in England and reworked some earlier novels. "The Death Shot" was published in the Penny Illustrated Paper. In October 1874, an abscess formed on the knee of his wounded leg, leaving him unable to walk without crutches. He was joint editor with John Latey of The Boys' Illustrated News for ten months from 6 April 1881 and wrote for it "The Lost Mountain; a Tale of Sonora." About this time Reid's invention began to flag and he lost popularity, so that he turned to farming near Ross in Herefordshire, although he continued to write. His last novel, No Quarter, set in the Parliamentary wars, and his last boys' book, The Land of Fire, were published after his death on 22 October 1883.[4] He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, now part of London. His tombstone quotes from The Scalp Hunters: "This is 'weed prairie'; it is misnamed: It is the Garden of God."[5]