Forgotten Authors: Harry Stephen Keeler
Harry Stephen Keeler was born in Chicago on November 3, 1890. His father died when he was two and his mother subsequently remarried. After her new husband, who was a gambler, lost Keeler’s mother’s savings and mortgaged the family home that was left to her by Keeler’s father, he killed himself. Keeler’s mother subsequently remarried again, but her third husband died of illness when Keeler was only 13 years old. Following the suicide of his first step father, Keeler’s mother took in boarders, mostly theatrical workers, to make ends meet and keep the family home.
The trauma of losing a father and two step fathers by the age of 13 appears to have had an impact on Keeler’s mental state and his mother had him committed to an insane asylum when he was a child. He apparently had multiple sessions in the asylum, including one that ended with his discharge on July 29, 1914, when he was declared recovered and had his property and voting rights restored.
Keeler often skipped school to attend to a paper route, but eventually he managed to earn a degree in electrical engineering from the Armour Institute. From 1912 to 1914, he worked in a steel mill in Chicago. He began writing in earnest in 1913, publishing his first short story that year. 1914 saw him publishing his first piece of crime fiction, the novella “Victim No. 5.” His early fiction appeared in magazines such as Argosy and Top-Notch Magazine.