Francis Worcester Doughty (1850-1917) was an American author of popular fiction and a screenwriter born in Brooklyn, New York. He wrote around 1500 dime novels, specialising in detective stories including the Old and Young King Brady series. Doughty also used a number of pen names, amongst them Richard R Montgomery, Horace Appleton and Police Captain Howard. His Brady series appeared under the authorship of A New York Detective. In addition to his writing career he was a coin collector whose 1890 book The Cents of the United States, A Numismatic Study was well regarded. This was not the case with his 1892 work Evidences of Man in the Drift in which he sets forth his belief that humans existed during the Tertiary period in America, citing as evidence what he claimed to be early human art in the form of depictions of animals and men on stones he had found. His theory was dismissed as absurd by professional archaeologists. In 1914 Doughty was recruited by the Tannhauser motion picture company to work on their serial Zudora, writing episodes 11 to 20. First published in 1900 by Frank Tousey of New York, this title was No. 84 in the series featuring Old King Brady, Gotham's greatest detective, and his protégé and pupil, Harry Brady, and this reprint includes a complete list of the earlier titles and a facsimile of the original cover.