American novelist Edward Sylvester Ellis was born in Ohio on April 11, 1840, and passed away on June 20, 1916, in Cliff Island, Maine. Ellis was a journalist, educator, and administrator of a school. He also wrote hundreds of books and magazine articles under a variety of pen names. The Steam Man of the Prairies and Seth Jones, or the Captives of the Frontier are two of Ellis's well-known fiction pieces. In other countries, Edward S. Ellis is arguably best known for his Deerfoot books, which up until the 1950s were frequently read by young boys. The most important of Beadle and Adams early dime books was Seth Jones. Seth Jones is reputed to have been one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite tales. Later, Ellis started producing more important pieces of history, biography, and argumentation. The biography "The Life of Colonel David Crockett," which told the tale of the speech known as "Not Yours to Give," was noteworthy.