Posts Tagged ‘Fiction’
Michener, James A.
by Grove Koger (2000) MICHENER, JAMES A[LBERT]. (1907-1997). Prolific novelist James A. Michener was rescued as a foundling by a widow living in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Years later, having taught high school and college, Michener found his nascent career as a textbook editor interrupted by World War II, an experience that altered his life dramatically. As a…
Read MoreMetcalf, Paul
by Donald Yannella (2000) METCALF, PAUL [CUTHBERT] (1917-1999). Since his three-volume Collected Works was published (1996-1998), Paul Metcalf’s writings are widely available. He is probably best understood as a member of the Black Mountain group; although he never attended that experimental North Carolina college, his early work was printed by the Black Mountaineer Jonathan Williams at…
Read MoreMelville, Herman
by Mary K. Bercaw Edwards (2000) MELVILLE, HERMAN (1819-1891). More than any other American author, Herman Melville used the sea as setting and concept to create great literature. With broad-ranging and deep philosophical interests, his books are far more than adventure stories. In his works, Melville struggles with human interactions in a diverse and complex world,…
Read MoreMcKenna, Richard
by Robert Shenk (2000) McKENNA, RICHARD [MILTON] (1913-1964). Richard McKenna was a career naval enlisted man whose 1962 novel The Sand Pebbles is a classic of naval fiction. McKenna’s childhood in Mountain Home, Idaho, was enriched by his great habit of reading, but when he entered the navy at age eighteen, he found it difficult to…
Read MoreMcCormick, Jay W.
by Robert Beasecker (2000) McCORMICK, JAY W. (1919- ). Jay W. McCormick was born and grew up in the small Lake Huron port town of Harbor Beach, Michigan. His father was a Great Lakes ship captain, and the younger McCormick spent considerable time sailing the Lakes with him. After he graduated from the University of Michigan…
Read MoreSleeper, John Sherburne (“Hawser Martingale”)
by Peter H. McCracken (2000) [SLEEPER, JOHN SHERBURNE], “HAWSER MARTINGALE” (1794-1878). An author and journalist from New England, John Sherburne Sleeper first went to sea in 1809 as a cabin boy and assumed his first command in 1821. By 1825 he was captain of an East Indiaman, and he spent much of his career in merchant…
Read MoreMayo, William S.
by Christina L. Wolak (2000) MAYO, WILLIAM S[TARBUCK] (1811-1895). Born in Ogdensburg, New York, William S. Mayo was a successful physician and author of popular adventure fiction. His mother’s family had been in the whaling industry for generations, and his father served in the merchant marine and owned a boatbuilding business. Family lore and his father’s…
Read MoreMatthiessen, Peter
by Eric G. Waggoner (2000) MATTHIESSEN, PETER (1927-2014). New York-born Peter Matthiessen has borne the double titles of author and naturalist since the beginning of his professional writing career. Son of an architect father who was also a trustee of the National Audubon Society, Matthiessen has continually demonstrated a deep respect for, and knowledge of, the…
Read MoreMason, F. Van Wyck
by Boyd Childress (2000) MASON, F[RANCIS]. VAN WYCK (1901-1978). World War I and II veteran, importer, and ultimately writer, F. Van Wyck Mason was born in Boston on 11 November 1901. He was awarded a B.S. from Harvard University in 1924 after serving briefly with the U.S. Army in France during 1918-1919. After leaving Harvard, Mason…
Read MoreMason, Arthur
by Bert Bender (2000) MASON, ARTHUR (1876-1955). Born in Ireland, Mason went to sea at age seventeen to embark on a career that would last twenty-four years. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1899. For much of his career he was engaged in the lumber trade out of various ports from San…
Read MoreMartin, William
by Susan Raidy Klein MARTIN, WILLIAM (1950- ). History and the sea are the subjects of the fiction of William Martin, contemporary novelist and screenwriter. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and earning a B.A. from Harvard University (1972) and an M.F.A. from the University of Southern California (1976), Martin has spent much of his life on…
Read MoreLovecraft, Howard Phillips
by Grove Koger (2000) LOVECRAFT, H[OWARD]. P[HILLIPS]. (1890-1937). Born in Providence, Rhode Island, H. P. Lovecraft subsequently used that seaport and such Massachusetts ports as Salem, Marblehead, and Newburyport (which he refashioned into “Arkham,” “Kingsport,” and “Innsmouth,” respectively) in much of his weird fiction. In doing so, he drew not only upon Salem’s importance in the…
Read MoreLondon, Jack
by Susan Irvin Gatti (2000) LONDON, JACK (1876-1916). Born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco in 1876, Jack London was deserted by his father and raised in Oakland by his mother and his stepfather, whose surname he adopted. London worked at many jobs as a teenager in order to buy a sloop for oyster pirating…
Read MoreLittle, George
Life on the Ocean, or Twenty Years at Sea (1843)
Read MoreLincoln, Joseph Crosby
by Susan Raidy Klein (2000) LINCOLN, JOSEPH C[ROSBY]. (1870-1944). Joseph C. Lincoln, the descendant of a long line of a seafarers, was a prolific author of best-selling verses, stories, and novels that portrayed life along the shore of Cape Cod with nostalgia and humor. The son of Captain Joseph and Emily (Crosby) Lincoln, the author was…
Read MoreLe Guin, Ursula K.
by Dennis Berthold (2000) LE GUIN, URSULA K[ROEBER]. (1929-2018). Born in Berkeley, California, Ursula K. Le Guin earned her B.A. at Radcliffe College in 1951 and her M.A. in French and Renaissance literature at Columbia University in 1952. Author of over fifty books of fiction, short stories, poetry, and criticism, she is usually considered a children’s…
Read MoreLarcom, Lucy
by Thomas R. Brooks (2000) LARCOM, LUCY (1824-1893). Lucy Larcom was a prolific and highly regarded writer of descriptive and religious verse, short fiction, and inspirational prose in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born on the Massachusetts North Shore in Beverly, she lived and worked as a young girl in the Lowell mills, taught…
Read MoreLane, Carl
by Donald P. Curtis (2000) LANE, CARL [DANIEL] (1899-1995). Carl Lane, a nautical writer and illustrator born in New York City, developed his love for the sea while vacationing in Maine, where he eventually settled. Lane wrote The Fleet in the Forest (1943), a Great Lakes historical novel about the construction of Commodore Oliver Perry’s Lake…
Read MoreLaing, Alexander
by Peter H. McCracken (2000) LAING, ALEXANDER [KINNAN] (1903-1976). Alexander Laing was the author of over twenty books of nautical fiction and history and a longtime librarian at Dartmouth College. Laing grew up in Great Neck, Long Island, New York, entered Dartmouth in 1921, and left in 1925 before completing his degree. In the fall of…
Read MoreKöepf, Michael
by Mira Dock (2000) KÖEPF, MICHAEL (1940- ). Born in San Mateo, California, Michael Köepf is the son of a commercial fisherman. He grew up fishing and draws on his experiences as a commercial fishing-vessel captain for his novel The Fisherman’s Son (1998). The protagonist, Neil Kruger, is adrift in a raft off the California coast,…
Read MoreKing, Stephen
by Richard J. King (2000) KING, STEPHEN [EDWIN] (1947- ). Although Stephen King sets much of his best-selling fiction in Maine, the New England coastal state of his birth and residence, he rarely writes about the sea. King has written dozens of horror, fantasy, and science fiction novels, novellas, short stories, and screenplays, including Carrie (1974;…
Read MoreKincaid, Jamaica
by Olivia Raymond (2022) KINCAID, JAMAICA (1949 – ). Jamaica Kincaid is an award-winning author and essayist of Caribbean descent. Born Elaine Potter Richardson in St. John’s on the island of Antigua, she moved to the United States in 1965 at the age of sixteen to work as an au pair, later attending Franconia College. In…
Read MoreJudson, Edward Zane Carroll (“Ned Buntline”)
by Margarita Rigal-Aragon (2000) [JUDSON, EDWARD ZANE CARROLL], “NED BUNTLINE” (1823-1886). Edward Zane Carroll Judson, better known by his pseudonym Ned Buntline, was born on the Atlantic coast in Stamford, New York. The family moved to Bethany, Pennsylvania, and then to Philadelphia about the time Judson was a teenager. The docks of this port impressed…
Read MoreKesey, Ken
by Christopher Lee (2000) KESEY, KEN [ELTON] (1935-2001). Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and soon moved to Oregon, where he now lives. He developed a love of hunting and fishing as a child, and much of his writing employs the lush natural settings and small towns of the Pacific Northwest as fitting places…
Read MoreJewett, Sarah Orne
by John F. Hussey (2000) JEWETT, SARAH ORNE (1849-1909). Sarah Orne Jewett was born and raised in South Berwick, Maine, a dwindling shipping and manufacturing center. As a girl she listened to her paternal grandfather’s tales of life as a sea captain, skirting the embargo of 1807; some fifty years later South Berwick still reviled…
Read MoreJennings Jr., John Edward (“Bates Baldwin”)
by Debra Glabeau (2000) [JENNINGS, JOHN EDWARD, JR], “BATES BALDWIN” (1906-1973). John Edward Jennings Jr., historical novelist, was born in Brooklyn, New York. The son of a surgeon, he began his seafaring in 1925 as a foremast hand aboard a tramp steamer traveling in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Jennings attended the Colorado…
Read MoreJames, Henry
by Greg W. Zacharias (2000) JAMES, HENRY (1843-1916). Henry James made nineteen Atlantic crossings and lived for much of his life in seacoast cities and villages. In his longer fiction, scenes near the English Channel in What Maisie Knew (1897) and in Venice in The Aspern Papers (1888) and The Wings of the Dove (1902, film…
Read MoreIrving, Washington
by James J. Schramer (2000) IRVING, WASHINGTON (1783-1859). The first American to succeed as a professional author, Washington Irving was born in New York City in the last year of the American Revolution. Although he is best known today as the author of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1819-1820), short tales that…
Read MoreIngraham, Joseph Holt
by Christina L. Wolak (2000) INGRAHAM, JOSEPH HOLT (1809-1860). Born in Portland, Maine, Joseph Holt Ingraham was a teacher, minister, and popular writer who produced more than 100 novels, 25 in 1845 alone at the peak of his career. Until the late 1840s Ingraham wrote popular historical romances, many about pirates and sea adventures. After…
Read MoreHowells, William Dean
by Udo Nattermann (2000) HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN (1837-1920). A native of Ohio, William Dean Howells began to work in his father’s printing shop at age nine. A self-taught student of languages and literature, he early entered a career in journalism. After writing a campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln, Howells was appointed American consul to Venice, where…
Read MoreHouston, James
by Boyd Childress (2000) HOUSTON, JAMES [ARCHIBALD] (1921-2005). James Houston has made his mark in writing, art, film illustration, film and documentary production, and design. Winner of numerous awards, Houston has written several children’s books and novels on the Arctic, Arctic seas, and the Inuit people. Houston was born in Toronto in 1921, the son of…
Read MoreHough, Henry Beetle
by Wesley T. Mott (2000) HOUGH, HENRY BEETLE (1896-1985). Editor of the Vineyard Gazette on the island of Martha’s Vineyard from 1920 almost until his death, Henry Beetle Hough was the grandson of a sea captain. He was born and raised in the whaling city of New Bedford, where his newspaper-editor father serialized Moby-Dick (1851) in…
Read MoreHine, Ephraim Curtiss
by Thomas Farel Heffernan (2000) HINE, EPHRAIM CURTISS (1818?-1853). Sailor and author raised in Genoa, New York, Ephraim Curtiss Hine is best known today as the model for the nautical poet Lemsford in Herman Melville’s novel White-Jacket (1850). Melville, who was Hine’s shipmate on the frigate United States during 1843-1844, treats the poet in the novel…
Read MoreHersey, John
by James F. Millinger and Jill B. Gidmark (2000) HERSEY, JOHN [RICHARD] (1914-1993). The prolific author John Hersey was born in China and moved to the United States in 1925, when his family decided to return. He was educated at Yale and Cambridge Universities and served for a time as secretary to Sinclair Lewis before becoming…
Read MoreHerbert, Henry William (“Frank Forester”)
by R. D. Madison (2000) [HERBERT, HENRY WILLIAM], “FRANK FORESTER” (1807-1858). Born in England and arriving in America in 1831, Henry William Herbert initiated a career as a writer of romances: his best-known fiction, Ringwood the Rover, was serialized in 1839 and published as a “cheap” novel in 1843. Under the name “Frank Forester,” he…
Read MoreHemingway, Ernest Miller
by Bickford Sylvester (2000) HEMINGWAY, ERNEST MILLER (1899-1961). Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction (1952) and the Nobel Prize in literature (1954), grew up in Oak Park, Illinois. Except when rough water forced them to go by train, he and his family crossed Lake Michigan every summer until 1917. In his teens,…
Read MoreHearn, Lafcadio
by Christopher Lee (2000) HEARN, [PATRICIO] LAFCADIO [TESSIMA CARLOS] (1850-1904). Lafcadio Hearn was born in Greece and migrated to the United States, where he drifted from New York, to Cincinnati, to New Orleans. In New Orleans he wrote Chita: A Memory of Last Island (1888), a fictionalized account of a hurricane in 1850 that…
Read MoreHawthorne, Nathaniel
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL (1804-1864). Born in Salem, Massachusetts, when the town was still one of the most active seaports in America, Nathaniel Hawthorne spent most of his youth within sight of the town’s busy wharves. His grandfather, Daniel, had been a shipmaster and achieved minor distinction as a privateer during the Revolutionary…
Read MoreHavighurst, Walter
by Peter H. McCracken (2000) HAVIGHURST, WALTER [EDWIN] (1901-1994). Walter Havighurst is known primarily as a historian of the Midwest, but he also wrote fiction, much of it influenced by his experiences at sea in the 1920s. Havighurst worked as a deckhand on Great Lakes freighters and Pacific lumber schooners before going to college and…
Read Morede Hartog, Jan
by James F. Millinger (2000) DE HARTOG, JAN (1914-2002). Born in Holland, Jan de Hartog ran off to sea when he was ten years old. Six years later he enrolled in Amsterdam Naval College and became a junior mate in the Dutch oceangoing tugboat service. Escaping to London under the German occupation, he served as…
Read MoreHarte, Bret
by Nathaniel T. Mott HARTE, [FRANCIS] BRET[T] (1836-1902). Born in Albany, New York, Bret Harte rose to literary prominence as editor of the Overland Monthly (first pub. 1868), a San Francisco-based magazine of western lore. In this forum Harte produced his best sketches, stories, and poems, including “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (August 1868), “The…
Read MoreHalyard, Harry
by Joseph Flibbert “HALYARD, HARRY” (dates unknown). “Harry Halyard” is the pseudonym of the unknown author of twelve novels published in the mid-nineteenth century. Five of them were intended to exploit public interest in the Mexican War: The Chieftain of Churubusco (1848), The Heroine of Tampico (1847), The Mexican Spy (1848), The Ocean Monarch (1848),…
Read MoreHall, Lawrence Sargent
by Joseph Flibbert HALL, LAWRENCE SARGENT (1915-1993). Lawrence Sargent Hall was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Following completion of his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1941, he served for four years as an officer in the U.S. Navy, including three years of sea duty. In 1946 Hall took a teaching position at his undergraduate alma mater,…
Read MoreHale, Edward Everett
by Norman E. Stafford HALE, EDWARD EVERETT (1822-1909). Born in Boston, Edward Everett Hale belonged to an old New England family. His great-uncle, Captain Nathan Hale, uttered the memorable cry, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” just before the British hanged him as a spy during the…
Read MoreHains, Thornton Jenkins (“Captain Mayn Clew Garnett”)
by Bert Bender (2000) [HAINS, THORNTON JENKINS], “CAPTAIN MAYN CLEW GARNETT” (1866-1953). Named for his maternal grandfather, Admiral Thornton Jenkins, U.S.N., Thornton Jenkins Hains had a career of indefinite length as a working seaman and was licensed in both England and the United States as a navigator for large oceangoing vessels. He began a writing…
Read MoreGuterson, David S.
by Jeffrey Cass (2000) GUTERSON, DAVID S. (1956- ). Born in Seattle, and residing on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound, David S. Guterson is well aware of the nuanced lives of his fellow islanders. His haunting novel Snow Falling on Cedars (1994) vividly captures both the hard agrarian work of inland strawberry farmers and the…
Read MoreGould, John W.
by Peter H. McCracken (2000) GOULD, JOHN W. (1814-1838). John W. Gould was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the seventh son of an influential judge and educator James Gould. He was christened “John Gould” but added the middle initial “W.” in 1835 to avoid confusion. Gould’s health was always poor; he sailed from New York in…
Read MoreGoodrich, Marcus
by C. Herbert Gilliland (2000) GOODRICH, MARCUS [AURELIUS] (1897-1991). Novelist Marcus Goodrich was born 28 November 1897, in San Antonio, Texas. Enlisting in the navy in 1916, he served initially in the Philippines aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Chauncey. With the outbreak of World War I, the Chauncey was sent to the Atlantic, and Goodrich was…
Read MoreGlaspell, Susan
by Attilio Favorini (2000) GLASPELL, SUSAN [KEATING] (1876-1948). Associated with the Provincetown Players, a group that included Eugene O’Neill, Jig Cook, and Floyd Dell in the early years of their illustrious collaboration (1916- 1922), Susan Glaspell is best known for her novels and the play Trifles (1916). The only one of her plays in which…
Read MoreGilkerson, William
by Michael P. Dyer (2000) GILKERSON, WILLIAM (1936-2015). William Gilkerson wrote nine books, most of which relate directly to maritime history. His first book, Gilkerson on War–From Rocks to Rockets (1964), is an exception, as it only touches upon maritime history in the larger context of naval warfare, which, in turn, appears only in the…
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