Zane Grey
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. |
Riders of the Purple Sage
Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey has been called the most popular western novel of all time an..
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The Mysterious Rider
Published in 1921, The Mysterious Rider was the 26th novel by Zane Grey and became a classic in the ..
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