Walter John Coburn (October 23, 1889 – May 1971) was an American writer of Westerns. Coburn was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana Territory, the son of Robert Coburn Senior, the founder of the noted Circle C Ranch located south of Malta.[1]
Coburn served in the Army aviation corps during the World War I era.[2] He later spent time as a cowboy and a surveyor, before becoming a full-time writer in the 1920s.
Coburn began his career with Western stories in general fiction pulp magazines such as Adventure and Argosy.[3] Later Coburn moved on to pulps specializing in Westerns, including Western Story Magazine, Lariat Story Magazine, Ace-High Western and Frontier Stories.[4] He often wrote for the Fiction House pulp magazines, which promoted Coburn as "the Cowboy Author".[5]
Coburn was enormously prolific; Flanagan states Coburn wrote almost two million words of fiction over a thirty year period.[1] Coburn at his most prolific, averaged over 600,000 published words per year.[6] He was so popular that eventually, two pulp magazines - Walt Coburn’s Western Magazine and Walt Coburn’s Action Novels were issued, consisting mainly of reprints of Coburn's work.[3]
After the pulps ended in the 1950s, Coburn switched his focus to writing paperback originals.[3]
Coburn was a devout Christian. Coburn claimed, in his posthumously published autobiography Western Word Wrangler (1973) that God had chosen him to spread the Christian message through his fiction.[1]
Coburn committed suicide at age 82 in Prescott, Arizona.[6]