Jack Schaefer
Jack Warner Schaefer (November 19, 1907 – January 1991) was an American writer known for his Westerns. His best-known works are the 1949 novel Shane and the 1964 children's book Stubby Pringle's Christmas.
Early life
Jack Warren Schaefer was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Carl and Minnie Schaefer. Carl was a German American attorney. Both his parents were avid readers, and his father was good friends with poet/author Carl Sandburg. Scheafer read voraciously as a child; early favorites were Edgar Rice Burroughs and Alexandre Dumas, before moving onto Charles Dickens, Zane Grey, amongst others. He was to describe himself as a “literary nut.”[1]
Education
In 1929 Schaefer graduated from Oberlin College with a major in English.[2] From 1929-1930 he attended graduate school at Columbia University, but left without completing his Master of Arts degree when the faculty there denied him permission to prepare a master’s thesis on the development of motion pictures.[3] Schaefer’s education included multiple courses on Greek and Roman mythology, which is thought to have served him well in creating the archetypal heroes that populated his Westerns.[4]
Journalism and other career work
Following his departure from Columbia University, Schaefer went to work for the United Press. In his long career as a journalist, he worked as a reporter for the United Press news agency, as editorial page editor for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., and The Baltimore Sun, and as editor of The New Haven Journal-Courier.[5]
In his career as a journalist, Schaefer wrote innumerable news stories, feature articles, and opinion columns and thousands of book/film/play reviews and editorials.[6]
In the 1930s Schaefer worked as the education director of the Connecticut State Reformatory, and following his stint at the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (1944 to 1948), he worked in advertising and was a freelance writer before devoting himself to fiction.[7]
Westerns
Schaefer's first success as a novelist came in 1946 with his novel Shane, set in Wyoming. Though Schaefer himself had never been in the western United States, he continued writing westerns, selling his house in Connecticut and moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1955 with his second wife, Louise. They resided in an old adobe home at 905 Camino Ranchitos, just off of Canyon Rd.
In 1975 Schaefer received the Western Literature Association's Distinguished Achievement award.
Personal Life
Schaefer was married to Eugenia Ives in 1931, and the couple had three sons and a daughter. They divorced in 1948, and a year later Schaefer married Louise Deans.[8]
In 1955, after taking an train trip West on an assignment from Holiday magazine to do some research on old western cow towns Schaefer sold his farm near Waterbury, Connecticut, [9] and moved to a 300-acre ranch[10] near Cerrillos, about 20 miles southwest of Santa Fe, called the Turquoise Six.[11]
He died of heart failure in Santa Fe in 1991.
Adaptations
Schaefer's novel Shane was adapted into the classic 1953 film of the same name starring Alan Ladd, and a sort-lived 1966 television series starring David Carradine. Monte Walsh was loosely adapted into the 1970 film of the same name starring Lee Marvin, and again as a 2003 television film starring Tom Selleck. Stubby Pringle's Christmas was also adapted into a television film in 1978.
Books
- Shane (1949)
- First Blood (1953)
- The Big Range (1953) (short stories)
- The Canyon (1953)
- The Piors (1984) (short stories)
- Out West: An Anthology of Stories (1955) (Editor)
- Company of Cowards (1957)
- The Kean Land and Other Stories (1959)
- Old Ramon (1960)
- Tales from the West (1961)
- Incident on the Trail (1962)
- The Plainsmen (1963) (children's book)
- Monte Walsh (1963)
- The Great Endurance Horse Race: 600 Miles on a Single Mount, 1908, from Evanston, Wyoming, to Denver (1963)
- Shane and other stories (1963) (publ. Andre Deutsch, London)
- Stubby Pringle's Christmas (1964) (children's book)
- Heroes without Glory: Some Goodmen of the Old West (1965)
- Collected Stories (1966)
- Adolphe Francis Alphonse Bandelier (1966)
- New Mexico (1967)
- The Short Novels of Jack Schaefer (1967)
- Mavericks (1967) (children's book)
- Hal West: Western Gallery (1971)
- An American Bestiary (1973)
- Conversations with a Pocket Gopher and Other Outspoken Neighbors (1978)
- Jack Schaefer and the American West: Eight Stories (1978) (edited by C.E.J. Smith)
- The Collected Stories of Jack Schaefer (1985)
See also
References
- ^ "Ohio Reading Road Trip | Jack Schaefer Biography". www.orrt.org. Retrieved 2020-12-24.
- ^ James, George (1991-01-27). "Jack Schaefer, Author of 'Shane' And Other Westerns, Dies at 83 (Published 1991)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-12-24.
- ^ "Lakewood Lore - Jack Schaefer". web.archive.org. 2007-04-15. Retrieved 2020-12-24.
- ^ Boyle, Molly. "Writer from nowhere: How Jack Schaefer found the West in himself". Santa Fe New Mexican. Retrieved 2020-12-24.
- ^ James, George (1991-01-27). "Jack Schaefer, Author of 'Shane' And Other Westerns, Dies at 83 (Published 1991)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-12-24.
- ^ "Ohio Reading Road Trip | Jack Schaefer Biography". www.orrt.org. Retrieved 2020-12-24.
- ^ "'SHANE' AUTHOR JACK SCHAEFER DIES AT AGE 83". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2020-12-24.
- ^ "Lakewood Lore - Jack Schaefer". web.archive.org. 2007-04-15. Retrieved 2020-12-31.
- ^ "Lakewood Lore - Jack Schaefer". web.archive.org. 2007-04-15. Retrieved 2020-12-31.
- ^ Boyle, Molly. "Writer from nowhere: How Jack Schaefer found the West in himself". Santa Fe New Mexican. Retrieved 2020-12-31.
- ^ "'SHANE' AUTHOR JACK SCHAEFER DIES AT AGE 83". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2020-12-31.
External links
- Biography and photo
- Petri Liukkonen. "Jack Schaefer". Books and Writers.
- Jack Schaefer at Library of Congress, with 35 library catalog records
- [1]
