Bøger i The Bestseller of History serien

Harry Sinclair Lewis was born on February 7th, 1885 in the village of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Throughout his lonely boyhood, the ungainly Lewis-tall, extremely thin, stricken with acne and somewhat pop-eyed-had trouble gaining friends and pined after various local girls. By 13 he had unsuccessfully ran away from home, in an attempt to become a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War. In late 1902 Lewis left home for a year at Oberlin Academy to qualify for acceptance by Yale University. While at Oberlin, he developed a religious enthusiasm that waxed and waned for much of his remaining teenage years. He entered Yale in 1903 but did not receive his bachelor's degree until 1908, having taken time off to work at Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair's cooperative-living colony in Englewood, New Jersey, and to travel to Panama. Lewis's unprepossessing looks, "fresh" country manners and seemingly self-importance made it difficult for him to win and keep friends but a number of students and professors made the effort, some of whom recognized his promise as a writer. Lewis's earliest published creative work-romantic poetry and short sketches-appeared in the Yale Courant and the Yale Literary Magazine, of which he became an editor. After graduation Lewis moved location and jobs constantly in an effort to make ends meet whilst writing fiction for publication. In working for newspapers and publishing houses he developed a knack for churning our short popular stories for a variety of magazines. It was a very popular choice for writers whilst engaged on the gestation of the Great American novel. He also earned money by selling plots to Jack London, including one for the latter's unfinished novel The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. Lewis's first published book was Hike and the Aeroplane, a Tom Swift-style pot-boiler that appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham. By 1914 the first of his serious works was published-Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man, followed the following year by The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life, and in 1917, The Job. That same year also saw the publication of another pot-boiler, The Innocents: A Story for Lovers, an expanded version of a serial story that had originally appeared in Woman's Home Companion. Free Air, another refurbished serial story, was published in 1919. In 1930, he became the first author from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." Sinclair Lewis died in Rome on January 10th, 1951, aged 65, from advanced alcoholism. His cremated remains were buried in Sauk Centre, Minnesota.

Pearl Zane Grey was born January 31st, 1872, in Zanesville, Ohio. From an early age, he was intrigued by history, fishing, baseball, and writing, all of which would stimulate his later success. Grey was an avid reader of adventure stories, consuming dime store novels by the dozen. By age fifteen he had written his first story; Jim of the Cave. His father, a difficult man, tore it to shreds and then beat him. He and his brother were keen fisherman and baseball players with aspirations of playing in the major leagues. Eventually, Grey was spotted by a baseball scout and received offers from colleges. Grey took up an offer from the University of Pennsylvania to studied dentistry. Naturally arriving on a scholarship really meant you had to be able to play. He rose to the occasion by playing against the Riverton club, pitching five scoreless innings and a double in the tenth which tied down the win. Sports scholarship kids can be average scholars. Grey certainly was. He preferred to spend his time outside class not trying to raise his grades but playing baseball, swimming, and writing. At university he was shy and teetotal, more of a loner than a party animal. Grey struggled with the idea of becoming a writer or baseball player for his career, but unhappily resolved that dentistry was the practical choice. Grey set up his dental practice in New York as Dr. Zane Grey after graduating in 1896. Though a dentist his real ambition now was to be a writer and New York had lots of publishers. Evenings were set aside for writing to offset the tedium of his dental practice. His first magazine article, "A Day on the Delaware," a human-interest story about a Grey brothers' fishing expedition, was published in the May 1902 issue of Recreation magazine. After some rejections he wrote his first Western, The Heritage of the Desert in 1910. It was the breakthrough. It quickly became a bestseller. Here was Grey's over arching themes; Manifest Destiny, the conquest of the Old West, and men wrestling with elemental conditions. Two years later Grey produced his best-known book, Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), his all-time best-seller. With its publication Zane Grey became a household name. Grey started his association with Hollywood when William Fox bought the rights to Riders of the Purple Sage for $2,500 in 1916. His writing career would now rise in sync with that of the movie industry. During the crash and subsequent depression of the 1930s, the publishing industry was hard work. Sales fell off. Serializations were harder to sell. Grey was lucky. He had avoided investing in the Stock Market, he was still writing and very popular and continued to earn royalty income. This also coincided with the time that nearly half of the film adaptations of his novels were made. Zane Grey died of heart failure on October 23rd, 1939, at his home in Altadena, California. He was interred at the Lackawaxen and Union Cemetery, Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania.

Herbert George Wells was born on September 21st, 1866 at Atlas House, 46 High Street, Bromley, Kent. He was the youngest of four siblings and his family affectionately knew him as 'Bertie'. The first few years of his childhood were spent fairly quietly, and Wells didn't display much literary interest until, in 1874, he accidentally broke his leg and was left to recover in bed, largely entertained by the library books his father regularly brought him. Through these Wells found he could escape the boredom and misery of his bed and convalescence by exploring the new worlds he encountered in these books. From these humble beginnings began a career that was, after several delays, to be seen as one of the most brilliant of modern English writers. Able to write comfortably in a number of genres he was especially applauded for his science fiction works such as The Time Machine and War of the Worlds but his forays into the social conditions of the times, with classics such as Kipps, were almost as commercially successful. His short stories are miniature masterpieces many of which bring new and incredible ideas of science fiction to the edge of present day science fact. Wells also received four nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature Despite a strong and lasting second marriage his affairs with other women also brought the complications of fathering other children. His writings and work against fascism, as well as the promotion of socialism, brought him into increasing doubts with and opposition to religion. His writings on what the world could be in works, such as A Modern Utopia, are thought provoking as well as being plausible, especially when viewed from the distressing times they were written in. His diabetic condition pushed him to create what is now the largest Diabetes charity in the United Kingdom. Wells even found the time to run twice for Parliament. It was a long, distinguished and powerfully successful career by the time he died, aged 79, on August 13th, 1946.