Walter R. Brooks was born in Rome, New York on January 9, 1886, and died in Roxbury, New York on August 17, 1958. Brooks attended the University of Rochester and, after graduation, worked for the American Red Cross and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. He became associate editor of Outlook in 1928 and subsequently was a staff writer for several magazines, including The New Yorker. The short stories he began writing at this time were published in The Saturday Evening Post, Atlantic Monthly, and Esquire. Brooks's short story "Ed Takes the Pledge" was the basis for the 1950s television series Mr. Ed, but his most lasting achievement is the Freddy the Pig series, which began in 1928 with To and Again (Freddy Goes to Florida). He subsequently wrote twenty-five more delightful books starring "that charming ingenious pig" (The New York Times), all of which are now available from The Overlook Press.