George M. Towle was an American author, historian, and translator known for accessible accounts of famous lives and journeys. Writing as George Makepeace Towle, he introduced young readers to explorers and historical figures through a clear narrative style. He also helped bring Jules Verne's fiction to English-speaking audiences, notably through his translation of Around the World in Eighty Days.

Born in Washington, D.C., Towle studied at Yale and Harvard Law School before practicing law in Boston. He later served as an American consul in France and England. His experience abroad supported a wider career in journalism, translation, and public speaking, and he contributed to periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic.

His Young Folks' Heroes of History series includes books on Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Marco Polo, Raleigh, Drake, and Pizarro. He also wrote about European politics and society, including a history of Henry V. These works reflect the educational aims and assumptions of nineteenth-century popular history. Towle's range reveals a writer intent on making distant places and historical events understandable through the actions and experiences of individual people.