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Frank Richard Stockton (1834 to 1902) was an American writer of mainly short stories, many of which were very popular, innovative children's fairy tales (middle school level and up). But he is still best-known even today because his short story, The Lady or the Tiger? shows up in almost every collection of classic American short stories. Anyone older than about 40 has almost certainly read this story in school. It still should be read! Stockton was also known as a humorist because he was, well, a very funny writer!
The Reformed Pirate (published in 1936) is a collection of some of Stockton’s modern fairy tales (modern compared to medieval stories like Cinderella!), drawn from three of his best-known topical collections: stories from The Floating Prince, stories from Ting-a-ling Tales, and stories from The Queen’s Museum. The Bee-man of Orn, one of Stockton’s best-known stories, is included as well. Many of these stories first appeared in the St. Nicholas magazine (1873 to 1940), jointly edited for some years by Stockton and Mary Mapes Dodge (author of Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates). This was a magazine that appeared monthly, filled with the best new stories that the editors could find in the previous year. Kipling’s classic story Rikki-tiki-tavi first appeared in this magazine, along with stories by Kate Douglas Wiggin (author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm) and Howard Pyle (author of Men of Iron and Otto of the Silver Hand), among many others. Rudyard Kipling even published some of his Jungle Book stories in St. Nicholas.
I hope that there is a revival of reading Frank Stockton stories – they are certainly worth the effort. You can find some of his other books in ebook format on Gutenberg.org.