Dead Letter

Seeley Register was the pen name of Metta Victoria Fuller Victor (1831–1885), a fabulously prolific dime novelist whose sagas combined adventure, crime, sensation, and the supernatural in varying proportions. credited with authoring of one of the first detective novels in the United States. She wrote more than 100 dime novels, pioneering the field. Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, she grew up in Wooster, Ohio in 1839, where she and her elder sister Frances (who also became a famous writer) attended a female seminary; they both published stories in local newspapers and, later, in the Home Journal. The sisters moved to New York City together in 1848, where they continued their literary pursuits. Metta married editor and publishing pioneer Orville James Victor in 1856. Her sister Frances would later marry Victor's brother. Metta served as editor for the Beadle & Company monthly Home and for Cosmopolitan Art Journal, and later anonymously published dime novels for her husband's series for Beadle. She died of cancer on 26 June 1885, in New Jersey.