Robert Ruark

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Robert Chester Ruark (born December 29, 1915 in Wilmington (North Carolina) , USA , † July 1, 1965 in London , England) was an American columnist and author .

Life

Ruark was born in Wilmington, North Carolina , the son of an accountant in a wholesale company. Despite the financial difficulties at the time of the Depression in the early 1930s, he was able to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill . There he also studied journalism, among other things . His first job was with the Works Progress Administration , a program run by the Roosevelt government to combat unemployment, where he worked as an accountant but was soon laid off. He then went to the Merchant Navy and then worked for two small newspapers in North Carolina.

1936 found Ruark as a copy boy job at a tabloid media entrepreneur EW Scripps in Washington, DC , the The Washington Daily News . Here he became the most famous sports reporter in a short time. In 1938 he married the interior designer Verginia Webb, from whom he divorced in 1963. During World War II he was drafted as a marine lieutenant in the United States Navy . In this capacity he was battery chief in various convoys on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean for ten months .

After Ruark's return from World War I, he continued to work for newspapers for the Scripps Publishing Group. Many columns , which were also published in two of his first books, date from this period . At the same time he made his first literary attempts, which were first published in literary magazines, and in 1947 his first novel Grenadine Etching .

Ruark's experiences on his first safari in East Africa were described in Horn of the Hunter . With the help of his guide on the safaris, Harry Selby , his next safari was captured in a one-hour documentary Africa Adventure . From 1953 to 1961 he wrote a series of articles for Field & Stream magazine , some of which are autobiographical and were published in two books. Two of the following novels by the author dealt with the struggle for independence of the peoples of East Africa, such as the Mau Mau uprising .

In 1960 Ruark moved to Spain , to the then small coastal settlement of Sant Antoni de Calonge . He died of cirrhosis of the liver in London in 1965 and was buried in Palamós , Spain .

Publications

  • 1947: Grenadine Etching .
  • 1949: I Didn't Know It Was Loaded .
  • 1949: One for the Road .
  • 1952: Grenadine's Spawn
  • 1953: Horn of the Hunter .
  • 1955: Something of Value .
  • 1957: The Old Man and the Boy .
  • 1959: Poor No More .
    • German from Werner von Grünau: Never again poor , Roman. Blanvalet, Berlin 1960.
  • 1969: The Old Man's Boy Grows Older . Holt, Rinehart and Watson, New York City.
  • 1962: Uhuru .
    • German by Egon Strohm: Uhuru. Novel of Africa today . Blanvalet, Berlin 1962.
  • 1965: The Honey Badger .
    • German by Egon Strohm: Der Honigsauger , Roman. Blanvalet, Berlin 1966.
  • 1966: Ed. Stuart Rose: Use Enough Gun .
    • German by Egon Strohm and Werner von Grünau: Safari . Blanvalet, Berlin 1968.
  • 1967: edited by Joan Fulton: Women , New American Library, New York City 1967.
  • 2014 The Lady and the Leopard . Parey, 2014, ISBN 978-3897155664 . Translated into German and selected from the following two posthumous titles Ruark's by Werner Schmitz :
    • 1991: Robert Ruark's Africa .
    • 1996: The Lost Classics

literature

  • Terry Wieland: A View from a Tall Hill: Robert Ruark in Africa . 2004.
  • Hugh Foster: Someone of Value: A Biography of Robert Ruark .
  • Alan Ritchie: Ruark Remembered: By the Man Who Knew Him Best . 2007.

Filmography

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ruark, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ruark, Robert Chester (full name); Ruark, Robert C.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American columnist and author
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Wilmington , North Carolina , USA
DATE OF DEATH July 1, 1965
Place of death London