Education
Harvard University.
Harvard University.
Born on December 15, 1876 in Bangor, Maine and educated at Bangor High School, Dowst was a graduate of the Harvard class of 1899, and lived briefly in Calais, Maine before becoming General Manager of the Boston publishing house Maynard & Company In 1916 he went to work for a New York advertising agency, Frank Seaman, Incorporated., where he remained until his death at age 45. Despite his day-jobs, Dowst was a prolific contributor of short stories and novelettes to magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, People"s Favorite Magazine, and Argosy All-Story Weekly.
One bibliography has identified 35 Dowst stories published between 1913 and 1923, though the list is not exhaustive.
He also wrote at least two novels in the same period, Bostwick"s Budget (Brooklyn, ca 1920) and The Manitoba from Ashaluna (Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, ca 1920), the second of which was produced as a film in 1924 (entitled On the Stroke of Three) starring Kenneth Harlan. Four Dowst short stories were also filmed in his lifetime: An Honest Manitoba (1918), The Redhead (1920, starring Alice Brady), The Dancin" Fool (1920, starring Wallace Reid), and Smiling All the Way (1920, from the story Alice in Underland).
Dowst died at the very height of his writing career, his last novelette, The Hands of Manitoba, being published posthumously in Munsey"s Magazine in 1923. Dowst died in New York but was buried in Bangor.