He also wrote short stories (several published in The Saturday Evening Post), plays and long verse poems.

[2] Among his more than 50 juvenile books are (with Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a seven-volume 'Treegate' series of historical fiction and a four-volume life of Thomas Jefferson.

His family moved to Cork and, until the age of eight, he was educated in the Irish language at Ring College, Waterford, Ireland.

After moving to England, he attended Abbey House, Romsey, Hampshire and then Cardinal Vaughan's Memorial School in London.

He wrote several books contending his methods and inventions would allow the UK, absent empire, to feed itself (see Farming on Factory Lines: continuous cropping for the large farmer [London, 1919]).

Leaving the newspaper business, he settled permanently in Hermosa Beach, California, as a full-time author, publishing 100 more books, at a rate of at least one a year and averaging more than three.

[8] His writing activities included unpublished and uncompleted projects, such as an unfinished 1958 collaboration with his friend Rosalind Russell on a musical script adaptation from his McGillicuddy McGotham, titled "Little Mac" (note picture above).