Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first author from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." Lewis wrote six popular novels: Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935).
Cecil William Mercer, known by his pen name Dornford Yates, was an English writer and novelist whose novels and short stories, some humorous, some thrillers, were best-sellers during the Interwar Period.
Robert William Chambers was an American artist and fiction writer, best known for his book of short stories titled The King in Yellow, published in 1895.
Elinor Glyn was a British novelist and scriptwriter who specialised in romantic fiction, which was considered scandalous for its time, although her works are relatively tame by modern standards. She popularized the concept of the it-girl, and had tremendous influence on early 20th-century popular culture and, possibly, on the careers of notable Hollywood stars such as Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson and, especially, Clara Bow.
William Henry Irwin was an American author, writer, and journalist who was associated with the muckrakers.
Edison Studios was an American film production organization, owned by companies controlled by inventor and entrepreneur, Thomas Edison. The studio made close to 1,200 films, as part of the Edison Manufacturing Company (1894–1911) and then Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (1911–1918), until the studio's closing in 1918. Of that number, 54 were feature length, and the remainder were shorts. All of the company's films have fallen into the public domain because they were released before 1928.
Mary Roberts Rinehart was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie. Rinehart published her first mystery novel The Circular Staircase in 1908, which introduced the "had I but known" narrative style. Rinehart is also considered the earliest known source of the phrase "the butler did it", in her novel The Door (1930), although the exact phrase does not appear in her work and the plot device had been used prior to that time. She also worked to tell the stories and experiences of front line soldiers during World War I, one of the first women to travel to the Belgian front lines.
Charles William Brackett was an American screenwriter and film producer. He collaborated with Billy Wilder on sixteen films.
William John Locke was a British novelist, dramatist and playwright, best known for his short stories.
William Scott Darling was a Canadian-born writer and a pioneer screenwriter and film director in the Hollywood motion picture industry. He is often known in Hollywood histories as Scott Darling, though he was almost invariably credited in films as W. Scott Darling.
Harold MacGrath was a bestselling and prolific American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. He sometimes completed more than one novel per year for the mass market, covering romance, spies, mystery, and adventure.
Armistead Churchill Gordon was a Virginia lawyer and a prolific writer of prose and poetry. He served as mayor of Staunton, Virginia.
William Martin Walton was a lawyer in Austin, Texas. During the Civil War, Walton served as a major in the Confederate Army. After the war, he was elected attorney general of the state and also headed the state Democratic Party. At the time of his death, Walton was one of the most respected lawyers in Texas.
Valerie Bergere was a French-born American actress who had a near fifty-year career in theatre and cinema. She began in the chorus of a touring opera company before acting in repertory theatre productions for nearly a decade. Bergere rose to play leading roles, but found her true success in vaudeville where for some seventeen years she remained one of the top draws in variety theatre. Over her later years Bergere also took on character roles in some twenty Broadway and Hollywood productions.
Frederic Chapin was an American screenwriter and composer. His name was also written as Frederick Chapin. He wrote the scores for several Broadway musicals. In addition he worked writing screenplays during the silent and early sound eras.
Amanda Minnie Douglas was an American writer of adult and juvenile fiction. She was probably best remembered by young readers of her day for the Little Girl and Helen Grant series published over the decades flanking the turn of the twentieth century.
William Blackwood and Sons was a Scottish publishing house and printer founded by William Blackwood in 1804. It played a key role in literary history, publishing many important authors, for example John Buchan, George Tomkyns Chesney, Joseph Conrad, George Eliot, E. M. Forster, John Galt, John Neal, Thomas De Quincey, Charles Reade, Margaret Oliphant, John Hanning Speke and Anthony Trollope, both in books and in the monthly Blackwood’s Magazine.
William Nathaniel Harben was an American writer active in the early 20th century. He specialized in stories about the people of the mountains of Northern Georgia. He was sometimes credited as Will N. Harben or Will Harben.
Carleton A. Hildreth was an actor, writer, researcher, and copy editor.
Harry Hervey was one of the most highly sought screenplay writers of the first half of the 20th century, praised by critics of literature, stage and screen.
