Was an American best selling author in the early 1900s. Just found out about this guy recently. Not related to the famous Churchill.
The Other Waldo Pepper’s favorite author, I think.
I was the one who wrote the original Wikipedia entry on this.
I discovered him when I went to the Brattle Bookstore in Boston, (back in 1973) home to reasonably priced old books. They had lots of Winston Churchill books. Didn’t buy any, bought some old Jules Verne books and a Mr. Dooley book from 1902 or so.
I’ve seen his books in the library but never read them. The statesman Winston Churchill always published under the name Winston Spencer Churchill or Winston S. Churchill to distinguish himself from the bestselling American novelist. By the way, the future statesman did write at least one novel which I have read years ago, a short political thriller called Savrola. It wasn’t exactly bad but it was forgettable. You can read it here: Savrola; a tale of the revolution in Laurania : Churchill, Winston, Sir, 1874-1965 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
I heard about him in the 60s when one of his books got the Classics Illustrated treatment. Of course, at that point, he had been completely forgotten. IIRC the comic explained who he was on the first page.
The British Churchill wrote the American for permission to use his name, just adding the S.
The US author was probably the best selling author of his time.
Bumped.
Seems I might as well put this here. When WSC and HST played poker:
Winston S. Churchill (the famous Churchill) wrote some very good auto-biographical stuff (also some that hasn’t aged as well). Winston Churchill (the other Churchill) gets a shout-out: they were on good terms.