The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Buntline, Ned
(bnt´ln, ln) (KEY) , pseud. of Edward Zane Carroll Judson, 182386, American adventurer and writer. In 1845 he founded in Nashville Ned Buntlines 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 Comanches 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.