Delphi Complete Works of Ernest Thompson Seton

by Ernest Thompson Seton, Delphi Classics (Editor)

The author and illustrator Ernest Thompson Seton was a prominent naturalist and founder of the Boy Scouts of America. An Englishman of Scottish ancestry, Seton was raised in North America, his family having emigrated to Canada in 1866. He gained experience as a naturalist by trailing and hunting in the prairie country of Manitoba. He used this knowledge as the basis for his pioneering series of animal fiction books. His most enduring work is ‘Wild Animals I Have Known’ (1898), featuring the beloved tale of the wolf Lobo. Deeply concerned for the future of the prairie, Seton fought to establish reservations for Indians and parks for animals threatened by extinction, as well as providing children with the opportunities for nature study. For the first time in publishing history, this eBook presents Seton’s complete fictional works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)

* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Seton’s life and works
* Concise introductions
* All the animal fiction tales, with individual contents tables
* Features rare stories appearing for the first time in digital publishing, including ‘Biography of an Arctic Fox’ and ‘Santanna, the Hero Dog of France’
* Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts
* Excellent formatting of the texts
* Seton’s books are fully illustrated with his original artwork — over 3,500 images!
* The rare musical, available in no other collection
* Includes a wide selection of Seton’s non-fiction, including rare naturalist pamphlets
* Ordering of texts into chronological order and genres



The Fiction
Wild Animals I Have Known (1898)
The Trail of the Sandhill Stag (1899)
The Biography of a Grizzly (1900)
Lives of the Hunted (1901)
Two Little Savages (1903)
Monarch, the Big Bear of Tallac (1904)
Woodmyth & Fable (1905)
Animal Heroes (1905)
Biography of a Silver Fox (1909)
Rolf in the Woods (1911)
Wild Animals at Home (1913)
The Preacher of Cedar Mountain (1917)
Woodland Tales (1921)
Bannertail (1922)
Biography of an Arctic Fox (1937)
Great Historic Mainly about Wolves (1937)
Santanna, the Hero Dog of France (1945)

The Musical
The Wild Animal Play for Children (1900)

The Non-Fiction
The Birds of Manitoba (1891)
How to Catch Wolves with the Newhouse Wolf Trap (1894)
Studies in the Art Anatomy of Animals (1896)
Bird Portraits (1901)
How to Play Indian (1903)
The Birchbark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians (1906)
Scouting for Boys by Robert Baden-Powell (1908)
The Natural History of the Ten Commandments (1907)
The Arctic Prairies (1911)
The Book of Woodcraft and Indian Lore (1912)
The Red Lodge (1912)
Wild Animal Ways (1916)
Sign Talk of the Indians (1918)

6811 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 30, 2022

About the author

Ernest Thompson Seton was a Scots-Canadian (and naturalized U.S. citizen) who became a noted author, wildlife artist, founder of the Woodcraft Indians, and one of the founding pioneers of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). Seton also heavily influenced Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting. His notable books related to Scouting include The Birch Bark Roll and The Boy Scout Handbook. He is responsible for the strong influence of American Indian culture in the BSA.

He was born Ernest Evan Thompson in South Shields, County Durham (now part of South Tyneside, Tyne and Wear), England of Scottish parents and his family emigrated to Canada in 1866. As a youth, he retreated to the woods to draw and study animals as a way of avoiding his abusive father. He won a scholarship in art to the Royal Academy in London, England.

He later rejected his father and changed his name to Ernest Thompson Seton. He believed that Seton had been an important name in his paternal line. He developed a fascination with wolves while working as a naturalist for Manitoba. He became successful as a writer, artist and naturalist, and moved to New York City to further his career. Seton later lived at Wyndygoul, an estate that he built in Cos Cob, a section of Greenwich, Connecticut. After experiencing vandalism by the local youth, Seton invited them to his estate for a weekend where he told stories of the American Indians and of nature.

He formed the Woodcraft Indians in 1902 and invited the local youth to join. The stories became a series of articles written for the Ladies Home Journal and were eventually collected in the The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians in 1906.

He was married twice. The first marriage was to Grace Gallatin in 1896. Their only daughter, Ann, was born in 1904 and died in 1990. Ann, who later changed her first name, became a best-selling author of historical and biographical novels as Anya Seton. According to her introduction to the novel Green Darkness, both of her parents were practicing Theosophists. Ernest and Grace divorced in 1935, and Ernest soon married Julia M. Buttree. Julia would write works by herself and with Ernest. They did not have any children, but did adopt an infant daughter, Beulah (Dee) Seton (later Dee Seton Barber), in 1938. Dee Seton Barber died in 2006.