Cover of the early youth magazine Top Top Weekly on yellowing paper with blue text and an illustration of two boys being tossed in the air on a sheet.

Gilbert Patten (Burt L. Standish) (1866–1945)
Stacy Burch, illustrator
Tip Top Weekly
New York: Street & Smith, 1896–1915
Rare Book Division

Tip Top Weekly

Over the course of 986 issues and 19 years, Tip Top Weekly related the adventures of Frank Merriwell, a clean-living Yale undergraduate who, when not exhibiting his athletic prowess, spent his time thwarting villainous plots. The long-running narrative was the product of just one author: Gilbert Patten, who wrote under the pseudonym Burt L. Standish, among other pen names. Tip Top Weekly is remembered today as one of the most successful youth-oriented dime novel publications—selling some 130,000 copies per week—and also one of the wordiest. Patten estimated that he had penned some 20 million words in service to the story.

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