33 Facts About Rex Stout

Rex Todhunter Stout was an American writer noted for his detective fiction.

In 1959, Stout received the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award.

Rex Stout was active in the early years of the American Civil Liberties Union and a founder of the Vanguard Press.

Rex Stout served as head of the Writers' War Board during World War II, became a radio celebrity through his numerous broadcasts, and was later active in promoting world federalism.

Rex Stout was the long-time president of the Authors Guild and sought to benefit authors by lobbying for improvement of authors' rights under the copyright laws.

Rex Stout served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America in 1958.

Rex Stout's father was a teacher who encouraged his son to read, leading to Rex having read the entire Bible twice by the age of four.

Rex Stout attended Topeka High School, Kansas, and the University of Kansas, Lawrence.

Rex Stout served in the US Navy from 1906 to 1908 and then spent about the next four years working at a series of jobs in six states, including cigar-store clerk.

Rex Stout invented a school banking system around 1916, which he promoted with his brother Robert.

Rex Stout began his literary career in the 1910s writing for magazines, particularly pulp magazines, writing more than 40 stories that appeared between 1912 and 1918.

Rex Stout decided to stop writing until he had made enough money to support himself through other means, so he would be able to write when and as he pleased.

Rex Stout wrote no fiction for more than a decade, until the late 1920s, when he had saved substantial money through his school banking system.

Ironically, just as Rex Stout was starting to write fiction again, he lost most of the money that he had made as a businessman in the Great Depression of 1929.

In 1929, Rex Stout wrote his first published book, How Like a God, an unusual psychological story written in the second person.

Fer-de-Lance was the first of 72 Nero Wolfe stories that Rex Stout published from 1934 to 1975.

Rex Stout continued writing the Nero Wolfe series for the rest of his life.

Rex Stout wrote at least one Nero Wolfe story every year through 1966.

Rex Stout wrote several non-Wolfe mystery novels during the 1930s, but none approached the success of the Nero Wolfe books.

In 1937, Rex Stout's novel The Hand in the Glove introduced the character of Theodolinda "Dol" Bonner, a female private detective who is an early and significant example of the female PI as fictional protagonist.

Rex Stout created two other detective protagonists, Tecumseh Fox and Alphabet Hicks.

Rex Stout joined the Fight for Freedom organization and hosted three weekly radio shows.

Rex Stout helped start the radical Marxist magazine The New Masses, which succeeded The Masses and The Liberator in 1926.

Rex Stout had been told that the magazine was primarily committed to bringing arts and letters to the masses, but he realized after a few issues "that it was Communist and intended to stay Communist", and he ended his association with it.

Rex Stout was one of the officers and directors of the Vanguard Press, a publishing house established with a grant from the Garland Fund to reprint left-wing classics at an affordable cost and publish new books otherwise deemed "unpublishable" by the commercial press of the day.

Rex Stout served as Vanguard's first president from 1926 to 1928, and continued as vice president until at least 1931.

In 1942, Rex Stout described himself as a "pro-Labor, pro-New Deal, pro-Roosevelt left liberal".

Rex Stout lobbied for Franklin D Roosevelt to accept a fourth term as president.

Rex Stout developed an extreme anti-German attitude and wrote the provocative essay "We Shall Hate, or We Shall Fail" which generated a flood of protests after its January 1943 publication in The New York Times.

In September 1942, Rex Stout defended FDR's policy of sending Japanese-Americans to concentration camps in a debate with the Socialist civil libertarian Norman Thomas.

In later years, Rex Stout alienated some readers with his hawkish stance on the Vietnam War and with the contempt for communism expressed in certain of his works.

Rex Stout is mentioned in Ian Fleming's James Bond book On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

The Rex Stout papers were donated to the Burns Library by the Stout family in 1980 and includes manuscripts, correspondence, legal papers, personal papers, publishing contracts, photographs, and ephemera.