Nick Carter first appeared in "The Old Detective's Pupil; or, The Mysterious Crime of Madison Square," in the September 18, 1886 issue of the New York Weekly. Nicholas Carter was the pseudonym used by several people who wrote many of the Nicholas Carter stories. Among the authors who had a hand in writing Nick Carter stories were A.L. Armagnac, William Perry Brown, George Waldo Browne, Frederick Russel Burton, O.P. Caylor, Stephen Chalmers, Weldon J. Cobb, William Wallace Cook, S.A. D. Cox, Frederick William Davis, E.C. Derby, Walter Bertram Foster, Charles Witherle Hooke, William Cadwalder Hudson, George Charles Jenks, Charles Agnw Maclean, St. George Rathborne, Eugene T. Sawyer, Vincent Scott, Samuel C. Spalding, and Edward L. Stratemeyer himself. These popular novels are considered to be some of the highest quality detective stories written in that era.