James A. Michener was a prominent nineteenth century writer, who had penned over forty books in his lifetime. His works involve family sagas focusing on the lives of several generation of a family in a particular location. He is recognized for his detailed and accurate incorporation of historical facts in his stories.
Michener was raised by an adoptive parent Mabel Michener as a Quaker and grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He claimed to have no memory of his birth parents and actual date of birth and place. However, it is speculated that he was born on February 3, 1907 in New York City. In 1925, he received his graduation degree from Doylestown High School. He then went on to study English and psychology at Swarthmore College and graduated with a distinction in 1929. Subsequently, he travelled across Europe and studied there for two years. He returned to Pennsylvania and began teaching at The Hill School as a high school teacher. Moreover, he studied for his master’s degree at University of Northern Colorado while teaching there. He got married to Patti Koon, in 1935. He accepted a lecturer post at Harvard University and taught for a year before he became a social studies education editor at Macmillan Publishers.
World War II affected every walk of life during early 1940’s. Michener was no exception as he was conscripted into the United States Navy as a naval historian. His missions took him on long journeys across South Pacific Ocean. His books were modeled after these experiences he had as a traveler. He recorded his impressions and experiences in the form of notes which he later successfully transformed into a novel. At the age of forty he published his first novel, Tales of the South Pacific (1947) to huge success. It was adapted for the Broadway theater and into a musical film South Pacific. In fact, the book won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
With the success of his first novel, Michener briefly did a stint in the television industry. He wrote the screenplay for a television series, Adventures in Paradise. Furthermore, he worked as an editor for Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. In 1959, he published another novel, titled Hawaii. Extensive research was conducted in the process of its writing. Since then, all of Michener’s works were based on detailed historical and geological facts and cultural aspects. His Centennial charts the life and times of generations of a Western family. Its magnificent craft and detailed historical account of West engendered a twelve-part television miniseries based on the family saga.
James Michener’s literary work had a trademark quality that was its length. Most of his novels exceeded thousand pages. His key works include The Drifters, Alaska, The Source and The Fires of Spring. His non-fiction contributions include his two memoirs, Iberia and The World Is My Home. Over seventy-five million copies of his work sold during his lifetime that earned him a generous amount of money which he perpetually donated to several educational institutions. During early 1960’s he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democratic candidate. US senator Joseph S. Clark recruited him as his campaign manager twice, admiring his dedication. He settled in Austin, Texas in his final years. Michener suffered from kidney failure, thus received daily dialysis treatment which kept him alive for years until he stopped it and passed away on 16th of October, 1997.
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