Photo: David Shankbone (2009) CC BY 3.0
Sample of authors
Vidal, Gore
The American novelist and essayist Gore Vidal was born at West Point, New York. He was originally christened Eugene Vidal, but in his teens he changed his first name to his maternal grandfather’s surname. Gore Vidal was the only child of the pilot Eugene Luther Vidal and his wife, Nina S. Gore, an actress. He was not close to either. His parents were divorced when Vidal was ten, and although he m...
Photo: Bentley Archive/Popperfoto/Getty Images (1955)
Sample of authors
Carr, John Dickson
American author of detective stories born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. His father was a criminal lawyer and politician who possessed a comprehensive collection of detective stories, so John Dickson Carr read books by authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and G. K. Chesterton from an early age. He soon decided he wanted to write his own stories, and made some of his first attempts while he...