Rediscovering Edward H. Hurlbut: The Forgotten San Francisco Crime Writer
“I was searching old newspapers and saw the name Lanagan. It was similar to mine. I read the stories and was hooked on Hurlbut's early crime stories.” Paul Langan
For more than 115 years, the short stories and novellas of Edward H. Hurlbut sat largely unread, buried in the yellowing pages of early 20th-century newspapers and out-of-print collections. That changes now. We are in the process of republishing Hurlbut's work — starting with The Jerroldson Case, Sad-Eyed Casey, and The Sinking of Submarine S-3 — and bringing his sharp, atmospheric crime fiction to a new generation of readers.
If you love early detective fiction, Golden Age crime stories, or the rich literary history of San Francisco, Hurlbut is a name you need to know.
Who Was Edward H. Hurlbut?
Edward H. Hurlbut was a San Francisco journalist, editor, publisher, and fiction writer whose career spanned the early decades of the twentieth century. A graduate of Stanford University, he began his newspaper career at The San Francisco Chronicle before rising to become political editor of The Call and later the old Bulletin. He also owned and edited The San Francisco Tribune, making him one of the more prominent figures in Bay Area journalism of his era.
His influence extended well beyond the newsroom. In 1924, Hurlbut served as campaign director in Northern California for President Calvin Coolidge during the Republican primaries — a testament to his standing in both political and civic circles. He also made an unsuccessful run for Congress himself as a Republican candidate, demonstrating the kind of ambitious, multifaceted personality that would ultimately find its most lasting expression in fiction.
Hurlbut died on September 15, 1954, in Redwood City, California, at the age of 73, leaving behind two sons, Edward and Howard, and five grandchildren.
A Crime Writer Ahead of His Time
What makes Hurlbut remarkable is how naturally his journalism translated into fiction. As a police beat reporter and political insider, he had an insider's eye for corruption, human weakness, and the machinery of justice — and he channeled all of it into his stories.
His most celebrated work, "Lanagan, Amateur Detective" (published in 1913 by Sturgis & Walton Company, with illustrations by renowned artist Frederic Dorr Steele), introduced readers to Jack Lanagan, a police reporter for the San Francisco Enquirer with deep ties to the city's law enforcement world. Lanagan is no drawing-room sleuth — he is street-smart, well-connected, and utterly at home in the fog-drenched alleyways and precinct houses of early 20th-century San Francisco. The book collects ten short detective stories and runs to over 300 pages of compulsively readable crime fiction.
Collectors and rare book dealers have described Lanagan, Amateur Detective as "an unusual example of a very early Golden Age detective yarn" — and it holds up remarkably well more than a century later.
The Syndicated Stories: Crime Fiction That Crossed America
Beyond the Lanagan collection, Hurlbut was a successful and prolific writer of syndicated short fiction, meaning his stories appeared in newspapers across the country, reaching a mass audience at a time when short fiction in print was the dominant popular entertainment. His titles include:
- The Jerroldson Case (now republished)
- Sad-Eyed Casey (now republished)
- The Sinking of Submarine S-3 (now republished)
- The Man Who Won
- The Allison Pearls
- The Besom of God
- The Fascinating Ho Hi
- The Macartney Curse
- Pacing Billy Passes
- After Many Days
- The Conspiracy of One
- Greater Love Than This
Each title hints at the range Hurlbut brought to his fiction — from courtroom intrigue and morality tales to military drama and character studies. These are stories rooted in a specific time and place, yet driven by timeless questions about guilt, justice, loyalty, and human nature.
Why I'm Republishing His Work
These stories have been out of print — in many cases completely inaccessible — for over a century. They are now in the public domain, which means the only thing standing between modern readers and Hurlbut's work has been the simple fact that no one has brought them back or could find them.
Why researching other historical subjects in newspapers from 1910-1915 I saw the name Jack Lanagan, which is similar to mine, and read a couple pages and that is how my interest to Edward H Hurlbut's work began.
I actually enjoyed reading it and thought it really captured an early style of crime-detective writing just as the genre was emerging. It has taken a fair amount of work to obtain all the stories,novellas from these early period. They were serialized and often ran over 4-12 weeks in the papers. Just getting each weeks stories was a challenge.
The first three releases — The Jerroldson Case, Sad-Eyed Casey, and The Sinking of Submarine S-3 — are available now, with more titles to follow.
Perfect For Fans Of...
- Early detective fiction and Golden Age crime stories
- Classic American short story collections
- San Francisco literary and cultural history
- Rare and rediscovered public domain literature
- Writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, Jacques Futrelle, and Melville Davisson Post
Get the Books
Whether you're a lifelong fan of vintage crime fiction or just discovering the genre, Edward H. Hurlbut's stories offer something rare: a direct window into the mind of a man who knew San Francisco's underworld not from imagination, but from experience. The first three titles I have rereleased are all available as a print book on Amazon, or ebook on Kobo. I will sell them also at my talks.
Stay tuned as we continue to release more titles from the Hurlbut catalog. Subscribe to our newsletter / follow us here to be notified when the next novella drops.
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