J. Allan Dunn

Joseph Allan Elphinstone Dunn (21 January 1872 – 25 March 1941), best known as J. Allan Dunn, was one of the high-producing writers of the American pulp magazines.

Biography.

He published over a thousand stories, novels, and serials from 1914 to 1941. He first made a name for himself in Adventure. At the request of Adventure editor Arthur Sullivant Hoffman, Dunn wrote Barehanded Castaways, a novel about people trapped on a desert island intended to avoid the usual cliches of such stories. Barehanded Castaways was serialized in 1921 and received well by Adventure’s readers. Over half of his output appeared in Street & Smith pulps, including People’s, Complete Story Magazine, and Wild West Weekly. Dunn wrote over a thousand stories. He wrote approximately 470 stories for Wild West Weekly alone. His main genres were adventure and western; although he wrote several detective stories, most appeared in Detective Fiction Weekly and Dime Detective. Dunn wrote The Treasure of Atlantis, a science fiction story about survivors from Atlantis living in the Brazilian jungle. The Treasure of Atlantis was published in All-Around Magazine in 1916 and reprinted in 1970. He was a specialist in South Sea stories and pirate stories. He also published much juvenile fiction, including many stories for Boys’ Life, primarily in the 1920s. Several of his novel-length stories were reprinted in hardbound, some under the pen name “Joseph Montague” for Street & Smith’s Chelsea House imprint; many of his books were issued in the United Kingdom. His stories were frequently syndicated in newspapers, both in America and around the world, making him, for a time, a very widely known author.

Dunn was born in England and came to the United States in 1893. He spent about five years in Colorado, five years in Honolulu, and ten years in San Francisco before relocating to the East Coast in 1914, after which his writing career blossomed. While living in Honolulu, Dunn befriended the writer H. D. Couzens. From 1914 forward, and in his pulp-writing career, he was known as “J. Allan Dunn”; before that, he primarily went by “Allan Dunn.”

While living in San Francisco, he worked for the Southern Pacific Company, which published Sunset magazine. He wrote an article for Sunset on author Jack London, and the two became friends. In 1913, Dunn was a frequent visitor to London’s Beauty Ranch in Glen Ellen, California. According to the diaries of Charmian London, London’s second wife, she and Dunn spent a lot of time together, which prompted Jack London to reinvigorate his interest in her.

A perennial “club man,” Dunn was a member of San Francisco’s Bohemian Club. Later, he belonged to New York’s Explorers Club and, in 1937, was elected to the board of trustees. He also belonged to the Adventurers’ Club of New York, eventually becoming vice president.

Dunn died, according to friends, of complications from chronic malaria; he had contracted the disease in Honolulu.