John Fox Junior

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John Fox
Fritzi Scheff , painting by Franz von Lenbach

John Fox (born December 16, 1862 in Stony Point , Kentucky , † July 8, 1919 in Big Stone Gap , Virginia ) was an American journalist and writer of novels and short stories .

Life

John Fox was born in Kentucky. His parents were John William Fox and Minerva Worth Carr. Fox studied English at Harvard University . He graduated in 1883 and became a reporter in New York City . After working for the New York Times and the New York Sun , he published his first serialized novel, A Mountain Europa, in Century magazine with great success in 1892 . In 1898, two short story collections followed with moderate success and his first novel in book form The Kentuckians . In the following years Fox became a war correspondent and in 1898 worked for Harper's Weekly in Cuba during the Spanish-American War , where he served with the Rough Riders . Six years later he traveled to the Far East to report on the Russo-Japanese War for Scribener's Magazine .

Although Fox continued to occasionally write for magazines, from around 1904 onwards he increasingly devoted himself to literary texts. The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come from 1903 and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine from 1908 are probably his most successful works. Both were on the New York Times' top ten best-selling novels in 1903 and 1904 and 1908 and 1909, respectively. The latter was made into films several times (1916 by Cecil B. DeMille as a silent film and in 1936 as a color film ( Fight in the Mountains ) by Henry Hathaway ). Much of his work uses motifs from naturalism or reflects experiences of his childhood in the bluegrass region of Kentucky and his life among the coal workers of Big Stone Gap in Virginia. Many of his works were historical novels or contemporary dramas that took place in this region.

In 1898 he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters .

Fox was married to the Austrian opera singer Fritzi Scheff from 1908 to 1912 .

Fox died of pneumonia in Big Stone Gap in 1919 and was buried in the family grave in Paris , Kentucky.

Works

  • A Cumberland Vendetta and Other Stories (1895)
  • Hell-fer-Sartain and Other Stories (1897)
  • The Kentuckians (1898)
  • A Mountain Europa (published 1899)
  • Crittenden (1900)
  • Blue-grass and Rhododendron: Outdoors in Old Kentucky (1901)
  • The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1903)
  • Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories (1904)
  • Following the Sun Flag: A Vain Pursuit Through Manchuria (1905)
  • A Knight of the Cumberland (1906)
  • The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908)
  • The Heart of the Hills (1913)
  • In Happy Valley (1917)
  • Erskin Dale (1920)
  • A Purple Rhododendron and Other Stories (1967)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Members: John Fox Jr. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 28, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Fox, John Jr.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Stony Point , Kentucky
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 1919
Place of death Big Stone Gap , Virginia