Thomas Mayne Reid (4 April 1818 - 22 October 1883) was born in Ballyroney, County Down. He fought in the Mexican-American War and became an internationally successful adventure novelist whose books were especially popular with juvenile readers, set mainly in the American West, Mexico, South Africa, the Himalayas and Jamaica.

Reid was principally an adventure, natural-history and boys' fiction writer rather than a speculative novelist. His relevance to the fantastic comes from his uncanny landscapes, unusual animals, supernatural-seeming natural phenomena, lost or isolated communities, frontier folklore and extreme environments. The Headless Horseman is his strongest connection to Gothic fiction, although its apparent supernatural mystery is ultimately rationalised.

His adventure fiction helped shape later juvenile fantasy, imperial romance, lost-world fiction and popular science-oriented adventure.