Francis Van Wyck Mason (November 11, 1901 – August 28, 1978) was an American historian and novelist. He had a long and prolific career as a writer spanning 50 years and including 78 published novels, many of which were well-received best sellers.

Biography

Early life and education

Van Wyck (pronounced ''Wike'') Mason was born to a patrician

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

family which immigrated to North America during the 17th Century. His early life featured much adventure, even before he began writing. His first eight years he lived in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

and then

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, where his grandfather served as U.S. Consul General, and during that time he learned the French language. Mason himself noted that he didn't learn English until he was nearly ten. After a few years in

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

he left for Europe in 1917, while still a teenager, to fight in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Like many future writers, he was an

ambulance driver An emergency medical technician (EMT), also known as an ambulance technician, is a health professional that provides emergency medical services. EMTs are most commonly found working in ambulances. In English-speaking countries, paramedics are ...

for a while. He then managed to enlist in the

French Army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (french: Armée de Terre, ), is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. It is responsible to the Government of France, along with the other components of the Armed For ...

, where he received decorations as an artillery officer, including the

Legion of Honor The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...

. On

Armistice Day Armistice Day, later known as Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth and Veterans Day in the United States, is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark Armistice of 11 November 1918, the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I a ...

, he was only celebrating his 17th birthday, yet had already joined the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

and achieved the rank of Lieutenant. After the war he went to preparatory school, then attended

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

University, where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1924. At one time during his college years, he was mistakenly arrested for murder. Having borrowed a dinner jacket, he was identified wrongly as a waiter who had committed a murder. His hopes of entering the diplomatic corps were thwarted after his father's death, so Mason started an import business instead and spent the next few years traveling the world buying antiques and rugs. His travels included Europe, Russia, the Near East, North

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

(nine weeks with his own caravan), the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

, Central Africa, and a ride across Central America on horseback. He lived in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, served in a cavalry unit of the

National Guard National Guard is the name used by a wide variety of current and historical uniformed organizations in different countries. The original National Guard was formed during the French Revolution around a cadre of defectors from the French Guards. Nat ...

, and played quite a bit of

polo Polo is a ball game played on horseback, a traditional field sport and one of the world's oldest known team sports. The game is played by two opposing teams with the objective of scoring using a long-handled wooden mallet to hit a small hard ...

. He indulged an interest in hunting the rest of his life.

Writing career and personal life

By 1927 a chance meeting with one of his college professors, John Gallishaw, encouraged him to try writing. He attended Gallishaw's course in short fiction on the condition that he pay for the course out of future sales. He married socialite Dorothy L. MacReady in New York City during November of that year. By May 1928 he had his first story published. He enjoyed immediate success selling to the

pulp magazine Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazine ...

s, and sold 18 stories before his first rejection. The magazines paid well at that time, and he was soon able to build a comfortable home outside of

Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

. During 1930, he published his first novel, ''The Seeds Of Murder'', which introduced Captain Hugh North, an agent of U.S. Army Intelligence. North was the hero in a long series of "intrigue" novels. By 1931, he had settled into a career as an author of novels as well as short fiction, publishing his first historical novel in book form, ''Captain Nemesis'', which was republished from an earlier pulp serial. The historical novel apparently did not sell well, because he resumed the mystery/intrigue genre, publishing a dozen or so volumes during the next seven years, including nine more about Hugh North. Mason was still writing historical stories for the pulps during this period and during 1938 resumed the genre for a major novel, ''Three Harbours'', about the early phases of the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...

. By this time Mason was doing very well financially, with residences in

Bermuda ) , anthem = "God Save the King" , song_type = National song , song = " Hail to Bermuda" , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , mapsize2 = , map_caption2 = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = , e ...

and

Nantucket Nantucket () is an island about south from Cape Cod. Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget, it constitutes the Town and County of Nantucket, a combined county/town government that is part of the U.S. state of Massachuse ...

, as well as

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

. When delivering the manuscript of ''Three Harbours'' from Nantucket, he was caught in the middle of the

New England Hurricane of 1938 The 1938 New England Hurricane (also referred to as the Great New England Hurricane and the Long Island Express Hurricane) was one of the deadliest and most destructive tropical cyclones to strike Long Island, New York, and New England. The storm ...

. He made it to New York, and the book became very popular. It changed his emphasis to historical fiction for the rest of his career, though he continued to write Hugh North stories until 1968. During the next few years, he wrote two companion books to ''Three Harbours'' – ''Stars on the Sea'' and ''Rivers Of Glory'' – as well as three more Hugh North mysteries. These books all sold well, especially ''Stars on the Sea'', which was a top 10 bestseller for 1940, and Mason was very successful when the war interrupted his writing. He re-enlisted in the Army after

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Re ...

and suspended his writing career, though he did manage to write some youth oriented war stories using the name Frank W. Mason. At this time he also published a couple of reworked pulp serials using the name Ward Weaver. During World War II, he worked as Chief Historian on General

Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

's staff, having achieved the rank of Colonel, and received numerous awards for bravery. His main responsibility was to document the war for future generations, but he also wrote a famous communiqué which announced the activities of

D-Day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D ...

to the world. As part of his duties he followed behind or with advancing troops as they worked their way into enemy territory and was one of the first into some of the concentration camps, including

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or su ...

After the war, he settled into a more leisurely lifestyle of a little more than one book per year, which he was to maintain for the next quarter century. His style was well refined by this time, and he published a series of fairly popular books. He finished his American Revolution series with ''Eagle in the Sky'' in 1948. The next year he wrote ''Cutlass Empire'', a popular novel about the famous buccaneer

Henry Morgan Sir Henry Morgan ( cy, Harri Morgan; – 25 August 1688) was a privateer, plantation owner, and, later, Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica. From his base in Port Royal, Jamaica, he raided settlements and shipping on the Spanish Main, becoming wea ...

, and during 1951 started a trilogy about the

US Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

. During the 1950s, he rewrote more of his pulps for the paperback market and published a successful youth book named ''The Winter At Valley Forge'' during 1955. After that, he continued to write historical novels for youths. Also during the 1950's, he relocated from Baltimore to Bermuda. His wife was ill during this period and finally died in 1958. He was soon remarried to Jean-Louise Hand, his long-time secretary. He spent the rest of his life in Bermuda, writing historical fiction for adults and youths, as well as several more Hugh North novels.

Death

He drowned in 1978, while swimming off the coast of Bermuda after having finished his final novel, ''Armored Giants'', about the battle between the ''Monitor'' and ''Merrimack'', which was published posthumously during 1980.

Writing

Overview

As a writer his career was based on popular fiction but included four main genres:

Pulp fiction ''Pulp Fiction'' is a 1994 American crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, who conceived it with Roger Avary.See, e.g., King (2002), pp. 185–7; ; Starring John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Tim Roth, Ving Rhame ...

, Mystery/intrigue (mainly based on series character Hugh North),

historical fiction Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ty ...

, and

young adult fiction Young adult fiction (YA) is a category of fiction written for readers from 12 to 18 years of age. While the genre is primarily targeted at adolescents, approximately half of YA readers are adults. The subject matter and genres of YA correlate ...

Writing Style

Mason's writing style was colorful though straightforward. His stories usually involve a heroic gentleman character. This hero may be forced to extreme measures by circumstances, but in the end, is victorious. Based on his own life which involved extensive travel, his stories are usually either set in exotic locations, as in the Hugh North stories, or involve main characters who are traveling extensively.

Pulp Fiction

His early work of adventure stories started with "The Fetish Of Sergeant M’Gourra" in May 1928 and continued until he started his more serious historical fiction during 1938. He published stories involving war, jungle settings, the

French Foreign Legion The French Foreign Legion (french: Légion étrangère) is a corps of the French Army which comprises several specialties: infantry, Armoured Cavalry Arm, cavalry, Military engineering, engineers, Airborne forces, airborne troops. It was created ...

, and historical adventures. Several of these early historical stories were rewritten and published as paperback originals during the 1950s. Mason's novel '' The Barbarians'' (1954) is the story of Cealwyn, an

Ancient Briton The Britons (Linguistic reconstruction, *''Pritanī'', la, Britanni), also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were people of Celtic language and culture who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age and into the Middl ...

. Cealwyn is kidnapped by

Carthaginians The Punic people, or western Phoenicians, were a Semitic people in the Western Mediterranean who migrated from Tyre, Phoenicia to North Africa during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'' – the Latin equivalent of the ...

, but escapes and fights his former captors during the

First Punic War The First Punic War (264–241 BC) was the first of three wars fought between Rome and Carthage, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the early 3rd century BC. For 23 years, in the longest continuous conflict and grea ...

. The story was made into the movie Revak the Rebel.

Hugh North Series

Captain (later Major and Colonel) Hugh North was a prototype for

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

: tough, athletic, a good shot and hand-to-hand fighter, as well as perfect in dress, manner, and speech for elegant society. The North series also sometimes foreshadowed actual military events, including a sneak attack on

. Mason created the character in 1930 and the series began with stories that had a fairly traditional mystery format. Through the years leading up to WW II these stories contain increasing levels of political intrigue but retained a murder mystery as a central theme. After the war the series largely became more typical spy fiction with the emphasis on a secret mission.

Historical Fiction

His historical stories nearly always involve some kind of warfare and frequently include naval battles or long sea voyages. Most of his historical novels are prefaced by a fairly lengthy (usually several pages) discussion of the historical setting and context of his story. Often, with his fictional characters, Mason recounts the story of some significant but not widely known historical event. Actual historical people are occasionally introduced as minor characters of the plot. An interesting tidbit about Mason's work in this genre is that most of the titles have 13 letters. When writing ''Rivers of Glory'' his secretary pointed out that the titles of the first two books in that series met that criterion, so Mason decided to go with it.

Bibliography

References

External links

Review of Mason's ''Captain Judas'' by Andy Beau at swordandsorcery.org
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mason, F. Van Wyck 1901 births 1978 deaths American historical novelists Writers from Boston The Harvard Lampoon alumni American emigrants to Bermuda United States Army colonels United States Army personnel of World War I 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American historians American male novelists 20th-century American male writers Novelists from Massachusetts American mystery writers American spy fiction writers American male non-fiction writers Historians from Massachusetts Writers of historical fiction set in antiquity Writers of historical fiction set in the early modern period Writers of historical fiction set in the modern age