James Otis Kaler - Life and Career

Life and Career

Kaler was born on March 19, 1848, in Winterport, Maine. (He was probably not related to the Revolutionary pamphleteer James Otis, whose only son died at the age of 18, but was named after him in a common Victorian usage.) He attended public schools, then got a job with the Boston Journal at 13, and three years later was providing coverage of the American Civil War. Later, he went on to work as a journalist or editor for various newspapers, superintendent at schools, and a publicity man at a circus.

In 1880, under the pen name James Otis, he authored his first, and still most famous (largely by way of a filmed version by Walt Disney), children’s book, Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with a Circus, a story about an orphan who runs away to join the circus. Following the book's success he went on to author numerous other children’s books, mostly historical and adventure novels. Like most writers of his era, he was astonishingly prolific, and a total of nearly 200 books by him have been identified. Most were signed with the Otis name, but he also used the pseudonyms Walter Morris, Lt. James K. Orton, Harry Prentice, and Amy Prentice. (Some scholars believe that the latter books, which were aimed at a younger audience than most of his works, were in fact penned by his wife.)

After spending several years in the southeastern states, he returned to Maine in 1898 to become the first superintendent of schools in South Portland. A school named in his honor still stands in that city. He married Amy L. Scamman on March 19 of that year, and they had two sons, Stephen and Otis. Kaler died of uremia on December 11, 1912, in Portland, Maine.