Gordon Young (writer)

Gordon Young (1886–1948) was an American writer of adventure and western stories.

Young was born in Ray County, Missouri.[1] He worked as a cowboy and served in the United States Marine Corps in the Philippines, before moving to Los Angeles and taking a job at the Los Angeles Times in 1914. Young eventually became Literary Editor of the newspaper; one of his correspondents was Sinclair Lewis.[2]

He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, February 10, 1948.[3]

Writing career

Gordon Young began writing fiction for the magazine Adventure in 1917. Young's first stories for Adventure were a series of crime thrillers about a gun-wielding gambler, Don Everhard. Magazine historian Robert Sampson argued the Don Everhard stories influenced later writers of Hardboiled crime fiction such as Carroll John Daly.[4] Young soon became one of the most popular of Arthur Sullivant Hoffman's roster of authors for Adventure.[5] He followed the Everhard stories with a series of South Seas tales about Hurricane Williams, an adventurer who shuns "civilized" society.[6] Young's novel, Days of '49 (1925), a historical narrative about the settlement of California, was well received by contemporary reviewers.[7]

Young's humorous Westerns about "Red" Clark, became his most commercially successful series; these tales first appeared in Adventure and Short Stories before being collected in book form.[6] The Clark stories were especially popular in Britain and most of the stories appeared in hardbacks for the UK library market.[1]

Several of Gordon Young's stories were adapted for the cinema, including the 1936 film Captain Calamity.[8]

References

  1. 1 2 P. R. Meldrum, "Young, Gordon (Ray)" in Twentieth Century Western Writers, edited by Geoff Sadler. St. James Press, 1991, ISBN 0-912289-98-8 ,(pp. 743-44)
  2. ↑ Richard R. Lingeman, Sinclair Lewis: Rebel From Main Street. Random House, 2002 ISBN 0-679-43823-8 (p. 71).
  3. ↑ San Diego Union, February 11, 1948.
  4. ↑ Robert Sampson, Yesterday's Faces: The Solvers. Popular Press, 1987 ISBN 0-87972-415-3 (pp. 209-214).
  5. ↑ Lee Server. Danger is my business: an illustrated history of the Fabulous Pulp Magazines. Chronicle Books, 1993. ISBN 0-8118-0112-8 (pp. 52-56)
  6. 1 2 Robert Kenneth Jones. The Lure of Adventure. Starmont House, 1989 ISBN 1-55742-143-9 (pp. 12-14).
  7. ↑ Helen Throop Purdy, "Days of '49", California Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 3, (September, 1926), pp. 312-315.
  8. ↑

Bibliography

Gordon Young writing as "Paull Steward" :

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