Buntline, Ned [key], pseud. of Edward Zane Carroll Judson, 1823–86, American adventurer and writer. In 1845 he founded in Nashville Ned Buntline's Own, a sensational magazine. After being lynched (1846) for a murder, but secretly cut down alive and released, he went to New York City, where he resumed the magazine. He led a mob in the Astor Place riot of 1849 against the English actor Macready. In the 1850s he turned up in St. Louis as an organizer of the Know-Nothing movement. After 1846 Buntline wrote more than 400 action novels, forerunners of the dime novels. Typical are The Mysteries and Miseries of New York (1848) and Stella Delorme; or, The Comanche's Dream (1860). In 1872 he persuaded W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) to act in his play, The Scouts of the Plains, which started Cody on his stage career.
See biography by J. Monaghan (1952).
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