Zane Grey

Zane Grey (1872–1939) was an American novelist who did more than any other writer to shape the popular image of the American West. Born in Zanesville, Ohio, a town founded by his mother's family, he played college baseball at the University of Pennsylvania and practiced dentistry in New York before turning to fiction. His early novel Betty Zane drew on family history; Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) made him famous, and The Lone Star Ranger and dozens of other Westerns followed, many adapted for film. A passionate angler, he also set world records in deep-sea fishing and wrote books about it.