American short-story writer and novelist Ben Ames Williams was born in
Macon, Mississippi, in 1889. Shortly afterwards his father, a
newspaperman, bought the "Jackson Standard Journal" in Jackson, Ohio,
and the family moved there. Williams grew up in the newspaper business,
and while in high school he worked at the paper, starting at the bottom
and eventually working his way up to writing and editing.
He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1910 and was offered a job
teaching at a boys school in Connecticut, but instead took a position
as a reporter for the "Boston American" newspaper. His first love was
writing fiction, however, and each day after work he would go home and
work on his writing. In 1915 he had his first story published, "Deep
Stuff", in a publication called "The Popular Magazine". In 1917 he had
a story, "The Mate of the Susie Oakes", published in "The Saturday
Evening Post" magazine, a publication that over the next
quarter-century would publish almost 200 of his stories. Many of
them--more than 125--were set in the fictional town of Fraternity,
Maine (be owned a summer home in rural Maine and loved the area) and
they were wildly popular with readers.
Williams is probably best known for the film adaptations of his novels,
such as
Todsünde (1945)
and
Die schwarze Perle (1953).
He died of a heart attack in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1953.
