"Doc" Smith, with the Skylark of Space series, a series which he started writing in 1917 with his co-Author, Mrs. Lee Hawkins Darby, was the first Scientifiction (yes, that's what it was called back then) that escaped from the confines of the solar system and went to explore the stars. He was a true pioneer.
This is quite a coincidence, but just two days ago, I found E.E. "Doc" Smith's "Skylark of Spac,e" "Skylark III," "Skylark of Valeron," and "Skylark DuQuayne" on iBooks in reprint ebooks for very reasonable prices, along with "Spacehounds of the I.P.C." and "The Galaxy Primes," all books I last read more than fifty years ago. Alas, I could not find any of the wonderful Lensman series, which was what I was looking for. I have a First Edition Grey Lensman hardback copy I found in a military surplus store fifty years ago. I really want to reread them.
There were a lot of reprints of the Stephen Goldin "Doc" Smith postmortem "collaborations" in which Goldin took Smith's unwritten story ideas and, in my opinion, incompetently wrote them up as novels.
There were, however, some novels I had never seen that were pure E.E. "Doc" Smith available for download! . . . whee! Yay!
I have a nice set of the lensman series that was printed in large paperback format in the 90s. Audible.com has an audio version. It’s good to learn they are on project Guttenberg.