Metta Victoria Fuller Victor (1831 – 1885)

Born March 2nd, 1831 in Erie, PA, Metta Victoria Fuller Victor was a prolific American author and pioneer of the detective novel.

One of the first writers of dime novels, she wrote over a hundred in her lifetime., many under pseudonyms. Seeley Regester was the name she used to publish the first American detective novel, The Dead Letter, published in 1866.

She married editor and publishing pioneer Orville James Victor in 1856, who is cited as the created of the dime novel. Metta served as editor for the Beadle & Company monthly Home and for Cosmopolitan Art Journal, and later anonymously published dime novels for her husband's series for Beadle.

Metta Victor died at the age of 54 from cancer, on June 26, 1885.

Books by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor