Leonard Wibberley

Leonard Wibberley

Leonard Patrick O'Connor Wibberley (April 9, 1915 – November 22, 1983): a prolific and versatile Irish-born author who spent most of his life in the United States. Wibberley published, under his name and also three pen-names, over one hundred books. He is best known for five satirical novels about an imaginary country Grand Fenwick--particularly for the first of these, The Mouse That Roared.

Wibberley's adult and juvenile publications cut across the categories of fictional novels, history and biography. He also wrote short stories (several published in The Saturday Evening Post), plays and long verse poems. He produced more than fifty juvenile books, for example (with Farrar, Straus and Giroux) the seven-volume Treegate series of historical fiction, which takes place during the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, and a four-volume life of Thomas Jefferson. As Patrick O'Connor, he wrote the Black Tiger series on auto racing for young adults. Throughout the decades, scenes and senses of the sea play important parts in both Wibberley's fiction and nonfiction. A keen yachtsman, he published several accounts of his ocean racing. He wrote a mystery series, and is classified as a science fiction writer.

Three of Wibberley's novels have been made into movies: The Mouse That Roared (1959), The Mouse on the Moon (1963), The Hands of Cormac Joyce (1972).