Warner, Frank A.

Frank A. Warner is an author of English juvenile fiction about whom very little is publicly known; his nationality, dates of birth and death, and educational background are not clearly documented, and three of his works are held in this collection. All three center on the boy protagonist Bobby Blake, dealing respectively with a school nine's league contest, a swamp misadventure on a plantation, and experiences in the frozen North. They clearly belong to the boys' adventure and school-sports fiction tradition. Warner wrote for young readers, linking successive volumes through a recurring hero and combining team sport, wilderness survival and exotic travel, with brisk plots and positive values. Such books fit the early twentieth-century publishing trend of English boys' literature; though they drew little critical attention, they offer a useful sample for studying the themes of popular juvenile reading of the period.