F. Van Wyck Mason

Francis Van Wyck Mason (1901 – 1978) was an American historian and novelist with 65 published novels. He was born in Boston, and during his first eight years he lived in Berlin and then Paris where his grandfather served as U.S. Consul General. During World War I he was an ambulance driver for a while and then enlisted in the French Army where he became a decorated artillery officer before rising to the rank of Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. After the war he attended Harvard during which period he was mistakenly arrested for murder. Having borrowed a dinner jacket, he was wrongly identified for a waiter who at the time had committed a murder.

He travelled extensively before becoming a writer selling stories to the pulp magazines and then moving on to novels. During World War II he worked as Chief Historian serving on General Eisenhower's staff. He spent the later years of his life in Bermuda, writing historical fiction for both the adult and youth market. His historical stories nearly always involve some kind of warfare and frequently include naval battles or long sea voyages. As well as stand alone HNF novels, two of his series AmericanRevolution and Civil War include some HNF novels.