Erle Stanley Gardner
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Erle Stanley Gardner (July 17, 1889 Malden, Massachusetts – March 11, 1970 Temecula, California) was an American lawyer and author of detective stories who also published under the pseudonyms A.A. Fair, Kyle Corning, Charles M. Green, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J. Kenny, Les Tillray, and Robert Parr.
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[edit] Life
Gardner graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1909, and received his only formal legal education at Valparaiso University School of Law. He attended law school for approximately 1 month, was suspended from school when his interest in boxing became a demonstration, then settled in California where he became a self-taught attorney and passed the state bar exam in 1911. He opened his own law office in Merced, California, then worked for five years for a sales agency. In 1921, he returned to the practice of law, creating the firm of Sheridan, Orr, Drapeau and Gardner in Ventura, California [1].
In 1912, he had married Natalie Frances Talbert; they had a daughter, Grace. Gardner practiced at the Ventura firm until 1933, when The Case of the Velvet Claws was published. Gardner gave up the practice of law to devote full time to writing. In 1937 he moved to Temecula, California, where he lived for the rest of his life. In 1968 he married his long-time secretary Agnes Jean Bethell (1902-2002), the "real Della Street".
[edit] Work
Innovative and restless in his nature, he was bored by the routine of legal practice, the only part of which he enjoyed was trial work and the development of trial strategy. In his spare time, he began to write for pulp magazines, which also fostered the early careers of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. He created many different series characters for the pulps, including the ingenious Lester Leith, a "gentleman thief" in the tradition of Raffles, and Ken Corning, a crusading lawyer who was the archetype of his most successful creation, the fictional lawyer and crime-solver Perry Mason, about whom he wrote more than eighty novels. With the success of Perry Mason, he gradually reduced his contributions to the pulp magazines, eventually withdrawing from the medium entirely, except for non-fiction articles on travel, Western history, and forensic science.
Gardner also devoted thousands of hours to a project called "The Court of Last Resort", which he undertook with his many friends in the forensic, legal and investigative communities. The project sought to review and, if appropriate, to reverse, miscarriages of justice against possibly innocent criminal defendants who were convicted owing to poor original legal representation or to the inadequate, careless or malicious actions of police and prosecutors and most especially, with regard to the abuse or misinterpretation of medical and other forensic evidence. The resulting 1952 book earned Gardner his only Edgar Award, in the Best Fact Crime category.
The character of Perry Mason was portrayed in various Hollywood films of the 1930s and 40s, and eventually became a long-running TV series with Raymond Burr as the title character. Gardner made an appearance as a judge in the final episode of the original series. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mason was revived for a series of made-for-TV movies featuring surviving members of the original cast, including Burr.
Under the pen name A. A. Fair he also wrote a series of novels about the private detective firm of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. He also wrote another noteworthy series of novels about District Attorney Doug Selby and his opponent, the rascally Alphonse Baker Carr. This series is interesting in that it is an inversion of the motif of the Perry Mason novels, with prosecutor Selby being portrayed as the courageous and imaginative crime solver and his perennial antagonist A.B. Carr being a wily shyster whose clients are always "as guilty as hell".
The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center currently archives Gardner's manuscripts. The library has constructed a miniaturized reproduction of his study room.[2]
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Terry Clane mysteries
[edit] Gramps Wiggins mysteries
[edit] Other fiction
- This is Murder (1935)[3]
- The Clue of the Forgotton Murder (1935) (criminologist Sidney Griff)[3]
- Two Clues (1937) (two novelets about Sheriff Bill Eldon, The Clue of the Runaway Blonde and The Clue of the Hungry Horse)[3]
- Over the Hump (London, 1945) (A novella also included in The Case of the Murderer's Bride)[3]
- The Case of the Musical Cow (1957)[3]
- Turn on the Heat, 1959[3]
- The Case of the Murderer's Bride (1969) (various short stories and novelettes)[3]
- The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith (1980) (five Lester Leith stories)[3]
- Whispering Sands - Stories of Gold Fever and the Western Desert (1981) (nine stories)[3]
- The Human Zero (1981) (seven stories)[3]
- Pay Dirt and Other Whispering Sands Stories of Gold Fever and the Western Desert (1983) (nine stories)[3]
- The Adventures of Paul Pry (nine Paul Pry stories)[3]
- Dead Men's Letters (1990) (a compilation of six Ed Jenkins novelettes)[3]
- The Blonde in Lower Six (1990) (a compilation of four Ed Jenkins stories)[3]
- Honest Money (1991) (six Ken Corning stories)[3]
[edit] Non-fiction
- The Land of Shorter Shadows (1948)
- The Court of Last Resort (1952)
- Neighborhood Frontiers (1954)
- Hunting the Desert Whale (1960)
- Hovering Over Baja (1961)
- The Hidden Heart of Baja (1962)
- The Desert is Yours (1963)
- The World of Water (1965)
- Hunting Lost Mines by Helicopter (1965)
- Off the Beaten Track in Baja (1967)
- Gypsy Days on the Delta (1967)
- Mexico's Magic Square (1968)
- Drifting Down the Delta (1969)
- Host With the Big Hat (1969)
- Cops on Campus and Crime in the Streets (1970)
[edit] Books about Erle Stanley Gardner
- Mundell, E. H. Erle Stanley Gardner: A Checklist. Kent State University Press, 1968. ISBN 87338-034-7.
- Senate, Richard L. Erle Stanley Gardner's Ventura: Birthplace of Perry Mason. Ventura, California: Citation Press. ISBN 0-9640065-5-3.
- Hughes, Dorothy B.. Erle Stanley Gardner: The Case of the Real Perry Mason. New York, William Morrow & Co. 1978. ISBN 0-688-03282-6.
- Johnston, Alva. The Case of Erle Stanley Gardner. New York, William Morrow & Co., 1947.
[edit] References
- ^ Current Biography 1944, pp224-226
- ^ Duffy, Jill; Rachel Howarth. Law-Related Resources at the Harry Ransom Center. Jamail Center for Legal Research. Retrieved on 2008-06-02.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Hubin, Allen J. (1984). Crime fiction, 1749-1980: a comprehensive bibliography. New York: Garland Pub.. ISBN 0-8240-9219-8.
