Percy Keese Fitzhugh
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Percy Keese Fitzhugh (September 7, 1876 - July 5, 1950) is an American author of nearly 100 books for children and young adults.
[edit] Biography
Fitzhugh was born in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Records do not indicate that he graduated. He married Harriet (Hatti) Lloyd LePorte on July 13, 1900 in Kingston, Massachusetts. Fitzhugh's first known work, The Goldenrod Story Book was published in 1906.
The bulk of his work, having a Boy Scouting theme, revolves around the fictional town of Bridgeboro, New Jersey. Characters included Tom Slade, Pee-wee Harris, Roy Blakeley, and Westy Martin. Each of these characters had their own, distinctly different, series of books.
In addition, a fifth series, Buddy Books for Boys, featured individual stories of other Boy Scout characters. In all, Grosset & Dunlap published nearly 70 different Fitzhugh titles in these 5 series.
Fitzhugh’s Scouting based books were very popular with children and adults. His characters became so real to his readers that it was not uncommon for Percy to receive fan mail addressed to the characters themselves. Fitzhugh's contribution to the Scouting movement can never be measured, but it is widely held that many thousands of boys joined the Scouts because of his writings.
In the 1930’s Fitzhugh began writing the Hal Keen Mystery Series (10 titles) under the pseudonym Hugh Lloyd, also published by Grosset & Dunlap. The Hal Keene books were followed by another mystery series - Skippy Dare - (3 titles- G&D). Neither of these series achieved the popularity of his earlier Boy Scout work.
Percy Keese Fitzhugh died at home on July 5th, 1950 from complications of a long illness, he was 73.
