|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
BiographyEarly yearsEvan Hunter was born and raised as Salvatore Lombino in New York City, living in East Harlem until the age of 12, at which point his family moved to the Bronx. He attended Olinville Junior High School, then Evander Childs High School before winning an Art Students League scholarship. Later, he was admitted as an art student at Cooper Union. Lombino served in the navy in WWII, writing several early short stories while serving aboard a destroyer in the Pacific. However, none of these stories were published until after he had established himself as an author in the 1950s.
While looking to start a career as a writer, Lombino took a variety of jobs, including 17 days as a teacher at Bronx Vocational High School in September of 1950. This experience would later form the basis for his 1954 novel The Blackboard Jungle. In 1951, Lombino took a job as an Executive Editor for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, working with authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, P.G. Wodehouse, Lester del Rey, Poul Anderson and Richard S. Prather, amongst others. That same year, he made his first professional short story sale, a science-fiction tale entitled "Welcome Martians" and credited to S.A. Lombino. Name Change and Pen-NamesSoon after his initial short story sale, Lombino started selling stories under the pen-names "Evan Hunter" and "Hunt Collins". The name "Evan Hunter" is generally believed to have been derived from two schools he attended, Evander Childs High School and Hunter College, although the author himself would never confirm that. (He did confirm that the name "Hunt Collins" was derived from Hunter College.)
As Evan Hunter, he wrote books such as The Blackboard Jungle (1954), Come Winter (1973), and Lizzie (1984). He wrote the original screenplay of the 1963 film The Birds for Alfred Hitchcock. However, Hunter also wrote a great deal of crime fiction and was advised by his agents that publishing too much fiction under the Hunter by-line, or publishing any crime fiction as Evan Hunter, might weaken his literary reputation. As a consequence, during the 1950s Hunter used the pseudonyms "Curt Cannon", "Hunt Collins" and "Richard Marsten" for much of his crime fiction. His most famous pseudonym, Ed McBain, debuted in 1956 with the first novel in the 87th Precinct crime series. Hunter himself publicly revealed that he and McBain were one and the same person in 1958, but he still continued to use the McBain pseudonym for the next several decades -- most notably on the 87th Precinct series, and on the Matthew Hope series of novels. By about 1960, Hunter had retired the pen-names of Cannon, Marsten and Collins. From this point on, crime novels were generally attributed to McBain and other sorts of fiction to Hunter. As well, reprints of crime-oriented stories and novels written in the 1950s (i.e. crime stories that had been originally credited to Hunter, Collins, Cannon or Marsten) were reissued under the McBain byline. Hunter stated that the division of names allowed readers to know what to expect: McBain novels had a consistent writing style, while Hunter novels had a more varied writing style. In 2000, a novel called Candyland appeared that was credited to both Hunter and McBain. The two-part novel opened in Hunter's psychologically-based narrative voice, before switching to McBain's customary "police procedural" style. Aside from McBain, Hunter used at least two other pseudonyms after 1960. The 1975 novel Doors was originally attributed to Ezra Hannon, before being reissued as a work by McBain, and the 1992 novel Scimitar was credited to John Abbott. DeathHunter died of cancer of the larynx in 2005 at the age of 78 in Weston, Connecticut. He had three sons, one of whom, Richard Hunter, is considered one of the world's leading harmonica virtuosos. Bibliography as Evan HunterImage:TheBlackboardJunglePaperback.jpg The Blackboard Jungle paperback cover Novels
Short stories
Plays
Screenplays
Teleplays
Children's Books
Autobiographical
Bibliography as Ed McBainNovelsImage:GutterGrave-cover.jpg One of Evan Hunter's early novels, originally published as by 'Curt Cannon,' then revised and reissued under the Ed McBain name in 2005
The 87th Precinct Mysteries
The Matthew Hope Mysteries
The Woman in Jeopardy Mysteries
Bibliography (Various)as Curt Cannon
as Richard Marsten(Hunter has acknowledged that the name "Richard Marsten" was derived from the names of his sons Richard, Mark, and Ted.)
as Hunt Collins
as Ezra Hannon
as John Abbott
Complete Chronological Bibliography
|
Sites |
Searched sites for "Evan Hunter" |
|
No sites found. |
Sorry, no matching site records were found. |
Want your site listed here?
|
||||||||||||||
