77 Facts About Zane Grey

Pearl Zane Grey was an American author and dentist.

Zane Grey is known for his popular adventure novels and stories associated with the Western genre in literature and the arts; he idealized the American frontier.

Pearl Zane Grey was born January 31,1872, in Zanesville, Ohio.

Zane Grey was the fourth of five children born to Alice "Allie" Josephine Zane, whose English Quaker immigrant ancestor Robert Zane came to the American colonies in 1673, and her husband, Lewis M Gray, a dentist.

Zane Grey's family changed the spelling of their last name to "Grey" after his birth.

Zane Grey was an avid reader of adventure stories such as Robinson Crusoe and the Leatherstocking Tales, as well as dime novels featuring Buffalo Bill and Deadwood Dick.

Zane Grey was enthralled by and crudely copied the great illustrators Howard Pyle and Frederic Remington.

Zane Grey was particularly impressed with Our Western Border, a history of the Ohio frontier that likely inspired his earliest novels.

Zane Grey wrote his first story, Jim of the Cave, when he was fifteen.

Zane Grey worked as a part-time usher in a theater and played summer baseball for the Columbus Capitols, with aspirations of becoming a major leaguer.

Zane Grey chose the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship, where he studied dentistry and joined Sigma Nu fraternity; he graduated in 1896.

Zane Grey rose to the occasion by coming in to pitch against the Riverton club, pitching five scoreless innings and producing a double in the tenth which contributed to the win.

Zane Grey was a solid hitter and an excellent pitcher who relied on a sharply dropping curveball.

Zane Grey was an indifferent scholar, barely achieving a minimum average.

Zane Grey struggled with the idea of becoming a writer or baseball player for his career, but unhappily concluded that dentistry was the practical choice.

Zane Grey's father paid the $133.40 cost and Grey resumed playing summer baseball.

Zane Grey concealed the episode when he returned to Penn.

Zane Grey went on to play minor league baseball with several teams, including the Newark, New Jersey Colts in 1898 and with the Orange Athletic Club for several years.

Zane Grey began to write in the evening to offset the tedium of his dental practice.

Zane Grey was a natural writer but his early efforts were stiff and grammatically weak.

Zane Grey suffered bouts of depression, anger, and mood swings, which affected him most of his life.

Zane Grey fished, wrote, and spent time with his many mistresses.

Zane Grey seemed to be the embodiment of the West I portray in my books, open and wild.

Elated at selling the article, Zane Grey offered reprints to patients in his waiting room.

In writing, Zane Grey found temporary escape from the harshness of his life and his demons.

The novel dramatized the heroism of an ancestor, Betty Zane Grey who had saved Fort Henry.

Zane Grey brought along a camera to document his trips and prove his adventures.

Zane Grey began the habit of taking copious notes, not only of scenery and activities but of dialogue.

Zane Grey gained the confidence to write convincingly about the American West, its characters, and its landscape.

Zane Grey next wrote a series of magazine articles and juvenile novels.

Zane Grey took his next work to Hitchcock again; this time Harper published his work, a historical romance in which Mormon characters were of central importance.

Zane Grey continued to write popular novels about Manifest Destiny, the conquest of the Old West, and the behavior of men in elemental conditions.

Two years later Zane Grey produced his best-known book, Riders of the Purple Sage, his all-time best-seller, and one of the most successful Western novels in history.

Hitchcock rejected it, but Zane Grey took his manuscript directly to the vice president of Harper, who accepted it.

Zane Grey had become a household name; thereafter Harper eagerly received all his manuscripts.

Zane Grey had the time and money to engage in his first and greatest passion: fishing.

Zane Grey felt the sea soothed his moods, reduced his depressions, and gained him the opportunity to harvest deeper thoughts:.

Unlike writers who could write every day, Zane Grey would have dry spells and then sudden bursts of energy, in which he could write as much as 100,000 words in a month.

Zane Grey visited the Rogue River in Oregon in 1919 for a fishing expedition, and fell in love with it.

Zane Grey returned in the 1920s, eventually setting up a cabin on the lower Rogue River.

Zane Grey captured the river's essence in two books: Tales of Freshwater Fishing and Rogue River Feud.

Zane Grey opened it to the public as a free-of-charge museum.

Zane Grey's sales fell off, and he found it more difficult to sell serializations.

Zane Grey had avoided making investments that would have been affected by the stock market crash of 1929, and continued to earn royalty income, so he did better than many financially.

From 1925 to his death in 1939, Zane Grey traveled more and further from his family.

Zane Grey became interested in exploring unspoiled lands, particularly the islands of the South Pacific, New Zealand and Australia.

Zane Grey thought Arizona was beginning to be overrun by tourists and speculators.

The more books Zane Grey sold, the more the established critics, such as Heywood Broun and Burton Rascoe, attacked him.

Zane Grey based his work in his own varied first-hand experience, supported by careful note-taking, and considerable research.

Zane Grey suggested that critics should ask his readers what they think of his books, and noted actor and fan John Barrymore as an example.

Zane Grey portrayed the struggle of the Navajo to preserve their identity and culture against corrupting influences of the white government and of missionaries.

Zane Grey's Wanderer of the Wasteland is a thinly disguised autobiography.

Grey's son Loren claims in the introduction to Tales of Tahitian Waters that Zane Grey fished on average 300 days a year through his adult life.

Zane Grey indulged his interest in fishing with visits to Australia and New Zealand.

Zane Grey first visited New Zealand in 1926 and caught several large fish of great variety, including a mako shark, a ferocious fighter which presented a new challenge.

Zane Grey established a base at Otehei Bay, Urupukapuka Island in the Bay of Islands, which became a destination for the rich and famous.

Zane Grey wrote many articles in international sporting magazines highlighting the uniqueness of New Zealand fishing, which has produced heavy-tackle world records for the major billfish, striped marlin, black marlin, blue marlin and broadbill.

Zane Grey held numerous world records during this time and invented the teaser, a hookless bait that is still used today to attract fish.

Zane Grey fished out of Wedgeport, Nova Scotia, for many summers.

Zane Grey helped establish deep-sea sport fishing in New South Wales, Australia, particularly in Bermagui, which is famous for marlin fishing.

Patron of the Bermagui Sport Fishing Association for 1936 and 1937, Zane Grey set a number of world records, and wrote of his experiences in his book An American Angler in Australia.

From 1928 on, Zane Grey was a frequent visitor to Tahiti.

Zane Grey fished the surrounding waters several months at a time and maintained a permanent fishing camp at Vairao.

Zane Grey claimed that these were the most difficult waters he had ever fished, but from these waters he took some of his most important records, such as the first marlin over 1,000 pounds.

Zane Grey served as president of Catalina's exclusive fishing club, the Tuna Club of Avalon.

Zane Grey died of heart failure on October 23,1939, aged 67 at his home in Altadena, California.

Zane Grey was interred at the Lackawaxen and Union Cemetery, Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania.

Zane Grey was a major force in shaping the myths of the Old West; his books and stories were adapted into other media, such as film and TV productions.

Zane Grey was the author of more than 90 books, some published posthumously or based on serials originally published in magazines.

Zane Grey wrote not only Westerns, but two hunting books, six children's books, three baseball books, and eight fishing books.

From 1917 to 1926, Zane Grey was in the top ten best-seller list nine times, which required sales of more than 100,000 copies each time.

Zane Grey started his association with Hollywood when William Fox bought the rights to Riders of the Purple Sage for $2,500 in 1916.

The ascending arc of Zane Grey's career matched that of the motion picture industry.

The Zane Grey family moved to California to be closer to the film industry and to enable Zane Grey to fish in the Pacific.

In 1936 Zane Grey appeared as himself in a feature film shot in Australia, White Death.

Zane Grey became disenchanted by the commercial exploitation and copyright infringement of his works.

Zane Grey felt his stories and characters were diluted by being adapted to film.