Zane Grey Biography and List of Works

Prolific American writer and pioneer of the Western as a new literary genre. Grey produced over sixty books, and almost as many have been brought out posthumously. In his works Grey presented the West as a moral battleground, in which his characters are destroyed or redeemed. His original semi outlaw heroes were his most influential creation: the outcast as a lonely man with a dark past, like Lassiter in RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE (1912), or Buck Duane, the agonized killer of LONE STAR RANGER (1915).

"Slingerland hated the railroad, and he could not see as Neale did, or any of the engineers or builders. This old trapper had the vision of the Indian - that far-seeing eye cleared by distance and silence, and the force of the great, lonely hills. Progress was great, but nature undespoiled was greater. If a race could not breed all stronger men, through its great movements, it might better not breed any, for the bad over-multiplied the good, and so their needs magnified into greed. Slingerland saw many shining bands of steel across the plains and mountains, many stations and hamlets and cities, a growing and marvellous prosperity from timber, mines, farms, and in the distant end - a gutted West."
(from The Roaring U.P. Trail, 1918)

Grey was born in Zanesville, Ohio. His father was a farmer and preacher and mother Quaker, of Danish background. Grey graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in dentistry in 1896, and practiced in New York City until 1904. During these years he started to write. Grey's first book, BETTY ZANE, was turned down by several published, and in 1904 Grey published it privately. The colourful frontier story was based on his ancestor's journal. After the book gained critical success, Grey continued the family story in THE SPIRIT OF THE BORDER (1905). He had married Lina Elise Roth of Lackawaxen who encouraged him to become a professional writer.

In 1908 Grey made a journey to the West with Colonel C.J. ('Buffalo') Jones, who told him tales of adventure on the plains. The trip was a turning point in Grey's career. He began writing Western novels in the tradition of Owen Wister and produced the first, THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN, in 1908. In 1912 the publishing company Harpers brought out Riders of the Purple Sage. It sold two million copies, was filmed three times, and became Grey's best-known western. It told the story of a virtuous woman, Jane Witherspoon, a rich Mormon, who finds protection for her ranch and herself from an extraordinary hero. This formula, where a mysterious outlaw fights to protect the innocent and the good, Grey used in many novels, setting the events against the beautiful but violent land.

In 1918 Grey moved to California, and lived there for the rest of his life. He built a large, Spanish-style house in Altadena, and continued to produce the usual 100 000 words each month. When not writing, Grey fished in the South Seas, or hunter along the Rogue River in Oregon, or spent time on Catalina Island. He died on October 23, 1939, in Altadena.

Much of Grey's knowledge of the West was based on historical research or trips in the regions he wrote about. Among others THE ROARING U.P. TRAIL (1918) has earned its fame by virtue of its sound historical detail about the building of the transcontinental railroad. THE VANISHING AMERICAN (1925) was a social commentary on the treatment of American Indians on the reservation. In such short stories as 'The Great Slave,' 'Yaqui, and 'Tigre' Grey showed his familiarity with Indian tribes and their history and the peon system of Mexican plantations. In 'Tappan's Burro,' a story of a wandering gold prospector and his faithful burro, Grey masterfully described the beauty of desert plains, barren mountain country, and forestland.

"Madge's sombre eyes gazed out over the great void. But, full of thought and passion as they were, they did not see the beauty of that scene. But Tappan saw it. And in some strange sense the colour and wilderness and sublimity seemed the expression of a new state in his heart. Under him sheered down the ragged and cracked cliffs of the Rim, yellow and gold and grey, full of caves and crevices, ledges for eagles and niches for lions, a thousand feet down to the upward edge of the long green slopes and canyons, and so on down and down into the abyss of forested ravine and ridge, rolling league on league away to the encompassing barrier of purple mountain ranges."
(from 'Tappan's Burro')

Greys sold 17 million copies during his lifetime. His non-fiction includes several tales of fishing. Grey left a number of manuscripts for novels, of which several have been published, among others THE REEF GIRL in 1977. Hollywood has used his books eagerly; according to one estimation over one hundred Western films have been based on Grey's stories. In the 1930s low budget Zane Grey films were highly popular and profitable for Paramount. Grey also wrote two screenplays, THE VANISHING PIONEER and RANGLE RIVER.

In the early phase of his career director Henry Hathaway leant on Gray's stories in such films as Heritage of the Desert (1932), where a hero outwits a claim jumper, Wild Horse Mesa (1932), a tale of a wild horse tamer who clashes with a villain who has discredited his brother, Under the Tonto Rim (1933), depicting a slow-witted cowboy who wins his manhood and wins the boss's daughter, Man of the Forest (1933), romantic Western, To the Last Man (1933), a story of a family feud healed by young love, The Thundering Herd (1933), a fast-paced Western about buffalo hunters and marauding Indians, The Last Round-Up (1934), based on Zane Gray's novel THE BORDER LEGION and telling a story about chivalry in a gang of rustlers which leads to the boss sacrificing his life for two young lovers.

For further reading: Zane Grey: A Biography by Frank Gruber (1969); Zane Grey by C. Jackson (1973); Zane Grey by A. Ronald (1975); Zane Grey by Carol Gay (1979); Zane Grey's Arizona by Candace C. Kant (1984); Zane Grey: A Photographic Odyssey by L. Grey (1985); Zane Grey, A Documented Portrait by G.M. Farley (1985); Selling the Wild West by Christine Bold (1987); West of Everything by Jane Tompkins (1992) - Other classic western writers: Louis L´Amour, Owen Wister, Frederick Marryat .

BETTY ZANE, (1904)