Zane Grey

Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 - October 23, 1939), born Pearl Zane Gray (he later dropped "Pearl" and changed the a to an e in "Grey") was an American author of popular adventure novels that presented an idealized image of the rugged Old West.

Born in Ohio, he studied to be a dentist to please his father, but his real passion was writing. He became especially interested in the West in 1907, after joining a friend on an expedition to trap mountain lions in Arizona. Grey wrote steadily, but it was only in 1910, and after considerable efforts by his wife Dolly, that his book Heritage of the Desert[?] became a bestseller, propelling him to a highly successful career churning out popular novels about Manifest Destiny and the "conquest of the Wild West." Two years later he produced his best-known book, Riders of the Purple Sage[?] (1912).

In his lifetime, Grey published over ninety books, many of which became bestsellers. His normal routine was to spend part of the year traveling and living an adventurous life while Dolly tended to his family and acted as his publicist, and the rest of the year using his adventures as the basis for the stories in his novels.

Zane Grey died in 1939 and was interred at the Union Cemetery in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania[?].