William Taylor Adams
William Taylor Adams, known by his pen name "Oliver Optic," was an influential American author born in Medway, Massachusetts, in 1822. After his family relocated to West Roxbury and later Boston, Adams pursued education and began a teaching career. He published his first book, "Hatchie, the Guardian Slave," in 1853, but it was his subsequent young adult novels that solidified his legacy. By 1865, Adams had achieved significant success with his series of adventure stories, particularly the "Boat Club" series, which is credited with popularizing the concept of book series for young readers.
His works, while moralistic by today’s standards, were adventurous and resonated strongly with boys, influencing future series such as the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Despite facing criticism from some quarters, including other authors and librarians, Adams's books enjoyed commercial success, selling as many as 100,000 copies per year at their peak. By the time of his death in 1897, he had published 126 books and around 1,000 short stories. Adams's contributions to children's literature laid a foundation for the genre, shaping the fiction landscape that remains relevant to young audiences today.
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William Taylor Adams
Author
- Born: July 30, 1822
- Birthplace: Medway, Massachusetts
- Died: March 27, 1897
- Place of death: Boston, Massachusetts
Biography
William Taylor Adams was born in Medway, Massachusetts. In 1838, his family moved to a farm in West Roxbury, and later moved to Boston. After he had finished his schooling, his parents engaged a tutor for him for two additional years of study. When he had finished his education, Adams spent some time traveling throughout the United States. When he returned to Dorchester, Massachusetts, he taught school for three years, then resigned to assist his father with running the Adams House Hotel in Boston.
Adams published his first book, Hatchie, the Guardian Slave, in 1853. This was one of two books he wrote for adults. By 1865, however, he had become so successful in his publication of young adult novels under the pseudonym “Oliver Optic” that he could retire from the schoolroom and turn to writing full time. In 1855, Adams published a book called The Boat Club. This book was so popular that he expanded the “Boat Club” series by writing five more books. Consequently, Adams is considered largely responsible for beginning the idea of “series” books, a notion that would be enlarged in the twentieth century with such works as the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series.
Prior to Adams’s work, most books available to young American readers were books such as those in Sunday-school libraries. While Adams’s books seem highly moralistic to modern readers, they were very adventurous and filled with the sort of action that appealed especially to boys. Indeed, the notion of a series of books that might appeal to girls was probably suggested to Louisa May Alcott by her publisher because of Adams’s success in writing books for boys. In spite of the fact that Alcott may well have benefitted from the work Adams had done, she seems not to have been at all grateful for the way he had paved. In her book Eight Cousins, published in 1875, she made a thinly veiled attack on Adams’s work.
Adams wasn’t universally popular with librarians, either. Some librarians refused to allow his works in their libraries. Indeed, he and other “sensational” writers raised some debate as to whether fiction should be included in libraries at all. Nonetheless, his books were often reviewed favorably in literary magazines and sold in very high figures. By the time of his death in 1897, Adams had 126 books and approximately one thousand short stories published. At the height of his popularity, his books sold at the rate of 100,000 per year.
Adams wrote using at least eight different pseudonyms and served as editor of such periodicals as Oliver Optic’s Magazine. While most of his work is out of print, Adams helped to establish a kind of fiction that is still highly popular with young people today.