Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author best known for horror novels. King's extremely popular books are among the best-selling books ever.

Biography

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine to Donald Edwin King and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury. When King was two years old, his father deserted his family and Ruth raised King and his adopted older brother David by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. The family moved to Ruth's home town of Durham, Maine but also spent brief periods in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Stratford, Connecticut. King attended Durham Elementary School and then nearby Lisbon High School.

Related Topics:
Portland, Maine - Durham, Maine - Fort Wayne, Indiana - Stratford, Connecticut - Durham Elementary School - Lisbon High School

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King has been writing since an early age. When in school, he wrote stories based on movies he'd seen recently and sold them to his friends. This was not popular among his teachers, and he was forced to return his profits when this was discovered.

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The stories were copied using a mimeo machine that his brother David used to copy David's newspaper, "Dave's Rag", which he self-published. "Dave's Rag" was about local events, and King would often contribute. At around the age of thirteen, King discovered a box of his father's old books at his aunt's house, mainly horror and science fiction. He was immediately hooked on these genres.

Related Topics:
Mimeo - Horror - Science fiction

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From 1966 to 1970, King studied English at the University of Maine at Orono. There, King wrote a column, "King's Garbage Truck", in the university magazine. He also met Tabitha Spruce there and they married in 1971. King took on odd jobs to pay for his studies. One of them was at an industrial laundry, from which he drew material for the short story "The Mangler". The campus period in his life is readily evident in the second part of Hearts in Atlantis.

Related Topics:
1966 - 1970 - English - University of Maine - Tabitha Spruce - 1971 - The Mangler - Hearts in Atlantis

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After finishing his university studies with a Bachelor of Arts in English and obtaining a certificate to teach high school, King took a job as an English teacher at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. During this time he and his family lived in a trailer. Making ends meet was sometimes difficult, and the money that came from short stories, published mainly in men's magazines, was very useful. King also developed a drinking problem which stayed with him for over a decade.

Related Topics:
Hampden Academy - Hampden, Maine - Drinking problem

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During this period, King began a number of novels. One of them told the story of a young girl with psychic powers. Frustrated, he threw it into the trash. Later, he discovered that Tabitha had rescued it; she encouraged him to finish it as Carrie. He sent it to Doubleday and more or less forgot about it. Some time later, he received an offer to buy it with a $2,500 advance (not a large advance for a novel, even at that time). Shortly after, the value of Carrie was realized with the paperback rights being sold for $400,000. Before the book was published his mother died of uterine cancer, in February 1974.

Related Topics:
Carrie - Doubleday - Uterine cancer - February - 1974

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In On Writing, King admits that at this time he was consistently drunk and that he was an alcoholic for well over a decade. He states that he'd based the alcoholic father in The Shining on himself, though he didn't admit that for several years.

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Shortly after the publication of The Tommyknockers, King's family and friends finally intervened, dumping his trash on the rug in front of him to show him the evidence of his own addictions: beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil. He sought help, and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s.

Related Topics:
Cocaine - Xanax - Valium - NyQuil

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King fans will note that the relative wealth of King's characters has risen through the decades, but not as precipitously as King's wealth itself: his earliest works (Carrie, The Shining, as well as much of the work in Night Shift) dealt with working-class families struggling from paycheck to paycheck in minimum-wage jobs; his late-80s work involved middle-class people like teachers and authors; his late 90s work sometimes dealt with airplane pilots, writers and others who can frequently afford a second home. All throughout, his work has remained immensely popular.

Related Topics:
Carrie - The Shining - Night Shift - Working-class - Minimum-wage - 80s - 90s - Second home

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