12 Facts About John Jakes

John William Jakes was an American writer, best known for historical and speculative fiction.

John Jakes was the author of The Kent Family Chronicles.

John Jakes first sold stories to pulp magazines while still in college in the early 1950s.

John Jakes studied creative writing at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, where he was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, graduating in 1953.

John Jakes then earned an MA in American literature from Ohio State University.

John Jakes lived there for ten years and worked as a copywriter for several advertising agencies while he wrote fiction at night and on the weekends.

John Jakes then published dozens of stories and several novels during the twenty years following completion of college, many of them fantasy fiction, science fiction and westerns, and other sorts of historical fiction.

John Jakes gained widespread popularity with the publication of his Kent Family Chronicles, which became a bestselling American Bicentennial Series of books in the mid to late 1970s, selling 55 million copies.

John Jakes subsequently published several more popular works of historical fiction, most dealing with American history, including the North and South trilogy about the US Civil War, which sold 10 million copies and was adapted as an ABC miniseries.

In September 2013, John Jakes was named a Florida Literary Legend at the Florida Heritage Book Festival and Writers Conference in St Augustine, Florida.

John Jakes lived on Bird Key in Sarasota, Florida, with his wife, Rachel, to whom he had been married from 1951.

John Jakes died in Sarasota on March 11,2023, at the age of 90.