Walter Noble Burns

Walter Noble Burns (1866–1932) was a writer of Western history and a Western fiction author. He was notable for his book, The Saga of Billy the Kid (1926).

Family

Born on October 24, 1866 in Lebanon, Kentucky, he was the son of Thomas E. Burns (1837–1908), a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Walter's mother, Mary Crisella Noble (1847–1871) had died when he was four years old. Then, he and his father, Thomas E. Burns had resided with his mother's parents: Lorenzo H. Noble (1819-1899) and Alice Ann Noble (1823-1899) during the 1870 & 1880 Federal Census in Marion Co., Kentucky. Noble was an attorney from Maine, who had migrated to Kentucky, and became a prominent attorney & judge. Walter married Rose Marie Hoke on 10 November 1902.

Career

Walter Noble Burns served with the 1st Kentucky Infantry during the Spanish–American War in 1898. In 1900, he moved to Chicago, Illinois and began a career as a journalist, literary critic and crime reporter. After World War I, Burns retired as a reporter, then concentrated his writing about Western American legends.

Publications

• A Year With a Whaler, by Walter Noble Burns, 1913
• The Saga of Billy the Kid, by Walter Noble Burns, 1926
• Tombstone: an Iliad of the Southwest, by Walter Noble Burns, 1927
• The One-way Ride: The red trail of Chicago gangland from prohibition to Jake Lingle, by Walter Noble Burns, 1931
• The Robin Hood of El Dorado: The Saga of Joaquin Murrieta, Famous Outlaw of California's Age of Gold, by Walter Noble Burns, 1932

Biography

Mark J. Dworkin (1946–2012) compiled a biography about Walter Noble Burns, entitled American Mythmaker: Walter Noble Burns and the Legends of Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, and Joaquín Murrieta. Dworkin died in 2012, prior to the completion of this book, which was published in 2015 by the University of Oklahoma Press.