Rex Stout

Rex Stout, full name Rex Todhunter Stout, (December 1, 1886 - October 27, 1975) was an American writer best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe. Stout was born in Noblesville, Indiana, but shortly after that his Quaker parents (John Wallace Stout and Lucetta Elizabeth Todhunter Stout) moved their family (nine children in all) to Kansas.

Related Topics:
December 1 - 1886 - October 27 - 1975 - American - Writer - Nero Wolfe - Noblesville, Indiana - Quaker - John Wallace Stout - Lucetta Elizabeth Todhunter Stout - Kansas

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His father was a teacher who encouraged his son to read, and Rex had read the entire Bible twice by the time he was 4 years old. At the age of 13 he was the state spelling-bee champion. He served two years in the U.S. Navy (as a yeoman on President Teddy Roosevelt's official yacht) and then spent about four years working at about thirty different jobs (in six states), including cigar store clerk, while he sold poems, stories, and articles to various magazines.

Related Topics:
Bible - U.S. Navy - President Teddy Roosevelt

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It was not his writing but his invention of a school banking system in about 1916 that gave him enough money to travel in Europe extensively. (About 400 U.S. schools adopted his system for keeping track of the money school children saved in accounts at school, and he was paid royalties.) In Paris in 1929 he wrote his first book, How Like a God. After writing three more successful novels, he returned to the U.S. and began writing detective stories. The first one was Fer-de-Lance, which introduced Nero Wolfe and his side-kick Archie Goodwin. That novel was first published as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post and then as a book in 1934. Stout continued writing the Wolfe series until shortly before his death in 1975, yielding a total of approximately 33 novels and 39 collected novellas or short stories.

Related Topics:
1916 - Europe - Paris - 1929 - How Like a God - Fer-de-Lance - Nero Wolfe - Archie Goodwin - Saturday Evening Post - 1934 - 1975

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Nero Wolfe has been featured in film adaptations from the 1930s through the 1980s and was recently the subject of a television series on the A&E Network. An organization of Stout and Wolfe aficionados, The Wolfe Pack, holds events for readers of the series including bimonthly book discussions and an annual Assembly and Banquet in New York, and publishes the biennial "Gazette."

Related Topics:
Nero Wolfe - A&E Network

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