By : Philip Verrill Mighels
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Philip Verrill Mighels (April 19, 1869 – October 12, 1911) was an American writer and novelist. His early poems, short stories, and several of his novels, including his best-selling Bruvver Jim’s Baby and The Furnace of Gold, are part of the Sagebrush School of American literature. He was also a versatile and prolific author, recognized for his science fiction novels, romances, and political commentary. Less-known are his detective novels (published under the pseudonym of Jack Steele).
He was born and raised in Carson City, Nevada, a younger son of pioneer journalists Henry Rust Mighels and Nellie Verrill Mighels Davis. Tutored to be a lawyer by his stepfather, Samuel Post Davis, he passed the Nevada bar in 1890, but moved to San Francisco, California to pursue a career in journalism and as a writer. After his mid-1890s move to New York City, his popularity grew with stories—on cowboys and prospectors, lost civilizations and ape-men, detectives and automobiles, and questions on race, modern sex, and political commentary—serialized in newspapers and major magazines such as Harpers, Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and McClures. Over a dozen of these serialized works were published as novels. His most popular novels, Bruvver Jim's Baby and The Furnace of Gold, were set in desert mining camps during Nevada's early twentieth-century mining boom, with touches of humor, romantic Westerners, and sagebrush country characters. After his death, at least two of his works were made into silent movies (“Subterfuge,” 1912, and “If Only Jim,” with Harry Carey, 1920).
Between 1897 and 1901, he and his wife Ella lived in London, in the Bloomsbury district. After returning to the United States they resided in California and, primarily, New York City, with visits to his Nevada home for research trips. While gathering material on the cattle round-up at the Bliss Ranch in Nevada he accidentally shot himself. He died four days later at nearby Winnemucca, at age 42. He is buried near his parents in Carson City's Lone Mountain Cemetery. One early Nevada historian stated that Phil Mighells, “probably the most brilliant creative genius of the younger set, was a voluminous writer, contributing to almost every branch of literature.”
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