Description

Zane Grey (b. 1872 – d. 1939) was born January 31, 1872 in Zanesville, Ohio and died October 23, 1939 in Altadena, California of heart failure. He was one of five children born to Lewis M. Grey and Josephine Alice "Allie" Zane Grey. His older siblings were sisters Ella and Ida, and brother Lewis Ellsworth.  He was closet to his younger brother, Romer. His birth name was Pearl Grey, selected by his mother who was enamored of Queen Victoria and heard that Pearl Grey was her favorite color. In his youth, he was a semi-professional baseball player and half-hearted dentist, having studied dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a self-taught writer.

In 1905, he married Lina Roth, whom he called Dolly.  She actively supported his writing career, editing manuscripts and making deals with publishers. He and Dolly had three children: Romer, Betty and Loren.  Romer and Betty were both born in New York City, while Loren was born in Middleton, NY.

The breakthrough success of his novel, Heritage of the Desert, in 1910 enabled Grey to establish a home in Altadena, California and a hunting lodge on the Mogollon Rim near Payson, Arizona. Throughout his writing career he wrote more than 80 books, a number of which were published posthumously. The novel, Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was highly popular; other novels included The Lone Star Ranger (1915), The U.P. Trail (1918), Call of the Canyon (1924), and Code of the West (1934).

In this photograph, Zane is shown with a swordfish he caught, San Pedro, California, 1936. He was an avid fisherman.

Sources:  britannica.com, zgws.org (Zane Grey’s West Society). biography.yourdictionary.com.