Frederic Van Rensselaer Dey
Frederic Van Rensselaer Dey was an American author born on February 10, 1861, in Watkins Glen, New York. Initially trained as an attorney after graduating from Columbia University Law School, Dey shifted his career path towards writing during a period of illness in the 1880s. He became best known for his work on the "Nick Carter" series, a popular dime novel franchise featuring a master detective created by John R. Coryell. Dey was a prolific writer, producing over a thousand novels and an estimated forty million words during his career, often working in longhand despite the availability of typewriters.
His narratives followed a classic detective formula, which he invigorated with his vigorous writing style. In addition to the "Nick Carter" stories, Dey created his own character, "The Night Wind," and authored various mystery novels and plays. Dey's recognition diminished in the 1910s as the publishing landscape shifted, leading to personal hardships. He passed away by suicide in 1922, leaving behind a legacy as an important figure in the evolution of detective fiction from dime novels to pulp magazines. Dey's contributions helped maintain the enduring popularity of the detective genre throughout the 20th century.
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Frederic Van Rensselaer Dey
Writer
- Born: February 10, 1861
- Birthplace: Watkins Glen, New York
- Died: April 26, 1922
- Place of death: New York, New York
Biography
Frederick Merrill Van Rensselaer Dey was born February 10, 1861 (other sources give 1862 or 1865), in Watkins Glen, New York. He was educated at the Havana Academy in New York. Dey later earned a degree from the law school of Columbia University and practiced as an attorney for a time.
The turning point of Dey’s life came in the 1880’s, when he fell ill. During his convalescence, he began dabbling in writing, enjoyed the results, and from that moment on turned his back on the legal profession to make his living pushing nouns against verbs. In 1889, dime- novel publisher Street and Smith contracted with Dey to continue the popular “Nick Carter” series that had first appeared in The New York Weekly in 1886, featuring the exciting adventures of a clean-living, two-fisted detective who is a master of disguise—a character created by John R. Coryell, 1848-1924.
Frederick Dey was the most prominent and prolific of many in a team of writers that carried on the “Nick Carter” franchise in a number of different venues. Thereafter, he turned out one twenty-five- to thirty-thousand-word short novel per week for nearly twenty straight years. He preferred to write in longhand, though the typewriter had come on the market in the 1870’s, and during his tenure produced more than one thousand novels, an output of an estimated forty million words.
The Nick Carter stories, told in the first person, were formulaic, in the classic detective mold: Nick is hired on a case; he looks for clues that eventually reveal the criminal; at the conclusion of the case, the criminal is caught and the detective explains how he put the clues together to finger the criminal and solve the crime. Dey’s vigorous writing, however, turned the formula into an art form that achieved a large and loyal following. The “Nick Carter” character may be a nineteenth century creation, but his popularity has seldom waned: magazines, TV series, domestic and foreign movies, a twelve-year radio series, and a revamped hero—“Nick Carter, Killmaster”—kept the dynamic detective alive late into the twentieth century.
Not merely an imitator, Dey, using the pseudonym Varick Vanardy, also created his own character, “The Night Wind.” Bingham Harvard, a super-powered police harasser who was wrongly accused of a crime, appeared in eight novels between 1913 and 1916. Dey also wrote a variety of other mystery/detective novels and short stories under many pen names, two plays (as “Marmaduke” Dey), and a nonfiction inspirational work titled The Magic Story.
Frederick Dey was married twice: to Anne Shepard Wheeler, with whom he had a son, Kinsley van Rensselaer Dey (born 1892), and to Maryot Holt “Hattie” Dey (born c. 1857), who wrote regularly for newspapers well into her eighties. In the late 1910’s, Dey, worn out and impoverished after the heroes of the dime novels gave way to the new detectives of the pulps, rented a room at New York City’s Hotel Broztell, and shot himself in the temple during the night of April 25, 1922. Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey, by the volume and consistency of his writing, established an enduring fictional character, and in the process became an important transitional figure between the dime novels of the 1860’s-1910’s and the pulps of the 1920’s-1950’s.