Foote, John Taintor

About the author

John Taintor Foote (1881–1950) was born in Colorado, and trained as an artist, though it was with words that he made his name. He tried for a year to make his living as an illustrator, but only had success once he switched to writing. He submitted short stories to magazines; one, Très Joli, was first published in The American Magazine in 1912. A collection of his short stories about Blister Jones was accepted immediately he submitted it to a publisher, and Blister Jones was published in 1913. The Hoofbeats collection also features stories about the character. His horse stories were a relatively small part of his output; he wrote several books about dogs, as well as some on fishing.

John Taintor Foote was also a successful playwright and screenwriter. His play Toby’s Bow had a season’s run on Broadway. Towards the end of his life he wrote film scripts, including that for The Story of Seabiscuit and the 1940 version of The Mark of Zorro.

Finding the books
Hoofbeats and The Look of Eagles are both reasonably easy to find. Blister Jones is now out of copyright, so can be found as a new paperback from a variety of publishers, and also on Google books, to be read for free.

Links and sources
Terri A. Wear: Horse Stories, an Annotated Bibliography, Scarecrow Press, 1987
Dustjacket of Hoofbeats
John Taintor Foote on IMDB
Thanks to Alison MacCallum and Susan Bourgeau for information and photographs of the author