Edwin Lanham
Edwin Moultrie Lanham, Jr. (1904-1979) was an American author known for his novels and short stories that often reflected his diverse life experiences and the American Southwest. Born in Weatherford, Texas, he came from a notable family with political connections, including a governor of Texas as his grandfather. After a childhood marked by loss and relocation to New York City, Lanham developed a passion for writing and art, which led him to travel the world at a young age and later study in Paris. His first novel, *Sailors Don't Care*, drew inspiration from his maritime experiences and was published in 1929.
Throughout the 1930s, Lanham worked as a journalist while also exploring themes related to the American landscape in his writing. His politically charged novel, *The Stricklands*, published in 1939, highlighted the struggles of a family during the Great Depression. Recognition came with his 1941 work, *Thunder in the Earth*, which earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship and was celebrated for its portrayal of the Texas oil camps. Although much of his earlier work focused on regional themes, he later achieved commercial success writing mystery novels. Lanham's legacy was solidified posthumously as his earlier works gained renewed appreciation as significant contributions to regional fiction.
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Edwin Lanham
Writer
- Born: October 11, 1904
- Birthplace: Weatherford, Texas
- Died: July 24, 1979
- Place of death: Clinton, Connecticut
Biography
Edwin Moultrie Lanham, Jr., was born in 1904 in Weatherford, Texas, where his family had settled as pioneers in the 1870’s. He was the son of Edwin Lanham and Elizabeth Stephens; the grandson of Samuel Willis Tucker Lanham, governor of Texas; and the nephew of Frederick Garland Lanham, a congressman. His father died when Lanham was four. After his mother remarried and moved with her new husband to New York City, Lanham attended the Tome School in Maryland and Polytechnic Preparatory Country Day School in Brooklyn, New York. He left the preparatory school because of an athletic injury and studied art for a short time at the National Academy of Design. At the age of sixteen, he found work on a freighter and traveled around the world for eight months before he enrolled at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1923.
In his junior year, Lanham left college to study painting in Paris. There he was befriended by Robert McAlmon, whose avant-garde Contact Publishing house printed such noted authors as Ernest Hemingway, William Carlos Williams, and Gertrude Stein. Encouraged by McAlmon, Lanham drew on his sea experiences for his first novel, Sailors Don’t Care, published in 1929. Lanhan later credited his time in Paris with shaping his novels and short stories.
While in Paris, Lanham met Joan Boyle, a fashion designer and sister of the writer and political activist Kay Boyle. They married in Paris in 1929 and moved to New York in 1930. Throughout the 1930’s, financial pressures forced Lanham to accept a series of positions as a journalist for such papers as the New York Evening Post and the New York Herald Tribune. During this decade, Lanham also traveled frequently to the Southwest to gather material for for a projected series of novels about that region. In 1939, he published a highly regarded, politically radical novel, The Stricklands, about an Oklahoma family farm during the Depression.
Lanham and his wife divorced in 1936. Four years later, he married Irene Stillman, a magazine editor; she gave birth to their daughter in 1943. Lanham received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1940 in order to write his most acclaimed novel, Thunder in the Earth (1941), praised for its depiction of the Texas oil camps of the day. The novel won the Texas Institute of Letters Award in 1942. Although Lanham’s novels about the Southwest won critical praise, their lack of financial remuneration led him to turn to more commercial fiction. He achieved financial success by writing numerous mystery novels and publishing short stories in popular magazines.
In the early 1950’s, Lanham and his wife moved to Clinton, Connecticut, where he served as the justice of the peace from 1950 to 1960. His last two novels drew once again on autobiographical material, especially The Paste-Pot Man (1967), which returned to Lanham’s seminal experiences in France in the 1920’s. He died in 1979. After his death, his novels of the Southwest enjoyed a renaissance and were recognized as masterworks of regional fiction.