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[Originally publisher in the Wisconsin Magazine, March, 1931.] Ten Thousand Letters a Year From Youthful Admirers All Over the Nation! This Is a Splendid Tribute from American Boyhood to Leo Edwards, a Wisconsin Writer, Whose Books They Love By Ted S. Holstein A boy's author with so many interested readers he receives 10,000 letters a year from them--that's a Wisconsin writer. Edward Edson Lee, or, as he is known to his youthful public, Leo Edwards. Although he winter in the South, Mr. Lee is a resident of this state. He lived in Beloit for more than fifteen years while struggling to get a start in the writing profession and now has a home and studio on Lake Ripley at Cambridge to which he returns early in April from St. Petersburg, Florida, to work on one of the four books he is writing this year. He is the author of 23 books for boys and plans to complete a total of 50 before he retires. His works include the Jerry Todd, Poppy Ott, Andy Blake, and Trigger Berg series, and he has numerous short stories to his credit. According to publishers' records, he is the most popular of juvenile series writers whose works are on sale in Madison. "Jerry Todd and the Whispering Mummy," which he considers his masterpiece, has sold to the extent of over 155,000 copies since it was printed in book-form in 1924; and "Jerry Todd and the Bob-Tailed Elephant" received more advance orders from dealers than any juvenile published by Grosset and Dunlap. Mr. Lee's pseudonym, Leo Edwards, was acquired through a change of literary style and publishers. His first book, done in a serious tone, was under his own name. When he achieved the lighter tone of humor that characterizes the rest of his volumes and won him success as a boys' author, his publisher requested him to credit the new books to a different name. He complied, and Edward Edson Lee became Leo Edwards, and soon afterwards when he changed publishers, the new house desired him to continue writing under the name by which he was already well known. A study of Mr. Lee's life reveals him as a self-made man. He has hand no formal education since he was thirteen years old and received very little encouragement in his early literary aspirations. He started to school at the age of five in Utica, Illinois, where he was living with his mother and sister. The former was determined to support her little family though it was necessary to take in washings to do so. "We were just about the poorest people in town," says Mr. Lee. "Our first home was a barn rented at four dollars a month, but my mother kept me clean, and I had plenty to eat. In the vacation months I roamed the hills about the town and swam in the canal and the near-by Illinois river. The year round I attended the Methodist Sunday school." Young Edward was a bright student, seldom getting grades of less than 97 in any of his scholastic work. Among his mementos he has a report card for one school term with nothing but one-hundreds on it. He says, "I never cared for athletics; I was too literary minded. At recess I wanted to stay in the school room and read. We had few juvenile books in those days, so at ten I began to read love stories or anything I could lay may hands on." Aptitude in written composition was early shown by Edward, and one day Miss Kate Gardner, the Utica teacher, said to him "Eddie, I have a feeling that some day you will be writing articles for the big city papers." That was the only foresight of his talent and the only encouragement he received, for at home he was told, though in a kindly way, that story writing was a waste of time; and later, when he tried to write pure fiction stories, he mother begged him with tears in her eyes to give up his "foolish" ambition. "A great thing happened to me when I was twelve years old," Mr. Lee tells, continuing the story of his life. "Up to that time I had been reading all kinds of junk. One day a neighbor who was moving away, gave me fifty-two copies of Golden Days, the leading juvenile magazine of that time. Here I read stories of boys written for boys. Those that I liked best were 'funny' stories about boys in a small town. Many years later it was this same type of story from my own pen that enabled me to become established as a author. "You can see how Golden Days stands out in my memory when I tell you that in my forties, after I had published my own books in this style, I had magazine dealers scour the country for copies of the discontinued magazine, and today I have one complete bound volume, 1883, and part of another among my treasures." Young Edward's artistic talent for a time sought an outlet in music. In the Utica school he would hurry back after the noon hour to have the privilege of pumping the organ. Later he learned to play the piano by ear and now has a piano in his studio. He composed quite a number of tunes and at the age of twenty-four had a song, "My Southern Violet," published. Mr. Lee first came to Wisconsin when he was thirteen. His sister, who was married at that time, moved to Beloit, taking her brother with her, and in a few months their mother joined them. Being a large boy for his age and feeling himself a drawback on his mother, Edward left school at the end of the year, never to return. He went to work in the Berlin Machine works, now the Yates-American company. He began supporting his mother and himself at the age of fourteen when they rented rooms and lived by themselves. "My greatest joy in those days, during the time I was fifteen to seventeen, was Sunday," he relates, "for then I could read all day long. I also tried to write a few stories at that time, even sent some away, but they all came back with printed refection slips." As a factory hand he made good progress, but it wasn't till he was almost twenty that he became ambitious to rise above that position and realized that he had a personality which he ought to develop. He character is indicated by his diversions at that time. He enjoyed good plays and good motion pictures. A year previous he had bought a piano for his home. Music thrilled him and built up creative desires within, which he could feel but not understand. He still lacked an interest in athletics, which perhaps explains why he has never resorted to this field of activity for subject matter in any of his plots. He was emotional and temperamental and caused his mother a bit of worry because he was different from the other boys. He was still writing stories. The idea of juveniles hadn't occurred to him, and he confined his efforts to the customary love and detective yarns. With the expansion of his personality he says, "I developed a lot of big ideas. For instance when automobiles first came out, I wasn't content to watch them go by but wanted one of my own. After saving up $400, I bought one, and Orient Buckboard, one f the first cars that came to Beloit. It was called a runabout. It was. It would usually run about a block and stop." Edward Edson Lee entered the ranks of authorship when he was 22 or 23; after years of aspiration, reading, and composition, a short story of his was published in the Beloit Daily News and brought the author the remuneration of two dollars. In 1909 Mr. Lee was married to Gladys Tuttle, the ceremony taking place on her father's farm house just out of Beloit. Three years later their only child, Eugene Edward, or "Beanie" as his father calls him, was born. "At that time I was still working in the factory, Mr. Lee says. "I experienced a growing discontentment because I realized I was in a rut. I had tried to write more stories and failed. I had even bought a typewriter for the purpose. And I was convinced now that I would never be able to write successful fiction, so it occurred to me to switch my avocational interest to advertising. "A good friend of mine, D.C. Smith, had taken a correspondence course in advertising, and he let me use his text books and helped me with the lessons. After many months of study, I was transferred in the fall of 1913 to the advertising department of the company that had so long employed me as a factory hand. My salary was $60 a month. Having had no business training and only limited schooling, I had a hard time at the new job. By dint of strenuous work I had my salary raised five dollars at the end of the first year, but I felt that I was worth more, so in looking around for opportunities, I moved in the spring of 1915 to Detroit where for almost two years I was associated with the great advertising leader, Edwin A. Walton, then advertising manager for the Burroughs Adding Machine company. "Here again I had to struggle to hold my own, for the men I worked with were mostly college trained. While with Burroughs, I started writing brief 'kid' stores for the house organ, and they were well received. The encouragement from these short bits and my success at advertising gave me courage to tackle anything, and I began to wonder again if I couldn't be equally successful at story writing. "What I needed, I figured, was contact with people who would make good story characters; so I moved from Detroit to Shelby, Ohio, in the spring of 1917, having secured an advertising position with the Autocall company. I really intended to take my vocation lightly and devote my major energy to fiction writing, but the Autocall position was very fascinating, so I gave little thought to stories. Still I had the feeling that some day I was going to write a story about certain Shelby people." In Shelby Mr. Lee became interested in boy scout work and also organized a boys' club. He spent his leisure time with boys and uncovered a strong natural affection for them. On New Year's eve, 1919, Mr. Lee, just after retiring, was laying awake wondering how he could get money for a gift to his wife. In the course of considering story writing as a means, he said to himself, "You like boys--why don't you write a boy story?" The next day, being a holiday, he went to the office and typed the plot of his first real boy story, "The Cruise of the Sally Ann." As main characters he used three Shelby boys who were his pals; namely, "Peg" Shaw, "Red" Meyers, and "Scoop" Ellery. "The leading character was Jerry Todd," he explains. "There was no boy by that name in Shelby or anywhere else as far as I know. Jerry represented the ideal of my own youth as I lived it over again in my own mind, and I further made use of my boyhood surroundings in shaping the plot. Many hundreds of people know that 'Tutter' in my books is Utica where I was raised." Mr. Lee visualizes the settings for his plots by harking back to actual localities. In addition to his childhood environment, he has utilized his factory and advertising experience for his books. The plotting for the book generally takes but two house of actual outlining. Working form this outline, he is able to complete a volume in approximately two months. "I found it was easy to write a story about real boys, and finished the 'Sally Ann' in about two weeks. I thought it was a masterpiece, but when I tried to sell it to the American Boy, it was rejected. However, it was published in the form I wrote it, in the Shelby newspaper, and I still have the clippings in a scrap book. Later in 1920 it was sold to the old Boys' Magazine and run in three parts. "Though not interested in my 'Sally Ann' serial, the American Boy editors like 'The Rose Colored Cat' I had blotted, and when I completed it, working nights and Sunday, they bought it for $275, their lowest rate. It was run in five parts in the spring of 1925. It proved a success what the readers, and the editors wanted more. "Convinced now that I could make a living writing stories, I gave up my advertising position and moved back to Beloit. There I wrote 'The Whispering Mummy' for the same magazine and received $700. I also wrote for this periodical seven connected stories about a boy in advertising. Later I rewrote them into my first published book, 'Andy Blake in Advertising,' brought out by D. Appleton and Company in 1922. Still later Grosset and Dunlap bought the rights t the book and in 1928 brought it out in reprint form as the first book of a new series." Several of Mr. Lee's works have been serialized in magazines, principally in the American Boy, before being revised and published in book form. "I mailed my carbon copies of 'The Rose Colored Cat' and 'The Whispering Mummy' to Grosset and Dunlap in 1923 after the Andy Blake book had proved successful, and asked them if it were possible to start a series of Jerry Todd books. Within a short time I signed a contract for five volumes. I was quite ill that summer and so was able to deliver only two completed manuscripts, concerning Jerry Todd and the Cat and Mummy, which were published the following year. By that time I had delivered three more manuscripts, 'Jerry Todd and the Oak Island Treasure,' which was my Sally Ann serial rewritten, "Jerry Todd and the Waltzing Hen,' and 'Jerry Todd and the Talking Frog,' the last mentioned made up of two serial I had sold to the Target magazine. Since then I have written a Jerry Todd book every year, making a total of ten. "Able to write more than one book a year, I started the Poppy Ott series in 1926, and then established the Andy Blake story as a series two years later. The latest, the Trigger Berg series, began in 1929." Although he is capable of writing six books a year, Mr. Lee restricts himself to four because of the publisher's difficulties in the mechanics of merchandising a greater number annually. Leo Edward's fan mail is forwarded from Cambridge to Grosset and Dunlap's New York office where a secretary answers every one of the approximately 10,000 letters received in a year. Mr. Lee regrets that he had to cease reading and answering his fan mail, but even with the help of his wife, it became physically impossible to handle it, and so he considers it only fair that it all be taken care of by a secretary. Mr. Lee's former summer home on a hill on the shore of Lake Ripley has been changed into an all-year home and named Hi-Lee. Here is his favorite studio, Storyland, but he maintains another workshop in Beloit and also does writing wherever he spends the winter in the South. He writes the first draft of his stories in longhand and then copies and revises them on the typewriter, doing all the work himself. July is his vacation month. Then he is entirely free to pal with the boys he loves and writes for. Then his more is more alive than usual, if that is possible, with young people. He welcomes many of his young friends who have read his books and live nearby or happen to be traveling near his home and stop to visit him Outboard motorboating is his favorite pastime, and he also likes to swim and fish. He is a prominent citizen of Cambridge. Twice he has written plays for the local boy scout troop which the boys have staged under his direction much to the benefit of the troop treasury as well as to the real entertainment of the townsfolks.
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