Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939) was an American author known for his Western novels. He was born in Zanesville, Ohio, a city founded by his maternal great-grandfather. He was an avid reader of adventure stories and dime novels as a boy and an enthusiastic baseball player and fisherman. He earned a baseball scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania and played for several minor league teams. He studied dentistry and after graduating established a practice in New York City in order to be close to publishers. In 1905 he married Lina “Dolly” Roth, who would edit much of his work and manage his career. His early writing met with regular rejection but gradually improved. The Virginian inspired him to write his first novel, Betty Zane, in 1903. In 1907 a lecture by a western hunter inspired him to take a hunting trip to the Grand Canyon, where got the idea to write about the American West. This resulted in The Last of the Plainsmen (1909) and The Heritage of the Desert (1910), which became his first best seller and Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) his all time best seller.  He moved the family to California in 1918.  He alternated between dry spells and bursts of tremendous energy. He typically spent part of his time traveling and spent the rest of the year writing novels and articles for magazines such as Outdoor Life.  His son Loren estimated that Zane fished 300 days a year and he traveled frequently to Long Key, Florida, and to New Zealand, where he established a lodge and camp in the Bay of Islands and won numerous world records for big-game fishing.