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Author Description Grant Martin Overton (September 19, 1887 - July 4, 1930), American novelist and literary critic, was born in Patchogue, Long Island, N.Y. He attended Blair Academy and spent two years at Princeton (1904-1906). At eighteen he was a reporter on the New York morning <i>Sun</i>; did newspaper work in Denver and San Francisco, shipped before the mast for a voyage around Cape Horn, and returned to the <i>Sun</i> in 1910 as reporter, editorial writer, and editor of the book review section.<br /><br />Going to George H. Doran, the publisher, in 1922, Overton wrote <i>When Winter Comes to Main Street</i>, <i>Cargoes for Crusoes</i>, and <i>American Nights Entertainment</i> in three successive years, bio-critical essays on American authors (chiefly on the Doran list) no less useful in public libraries for their being glorified publicity. Overton’s novels had a pronounced romantic tinge, as shown by their titles—<i>The Mermaid</i>, and <i>The Thousand and First Night</i>; a fictional account of Walt Whitman’s early years, <i>The Answerer</i>, also took some liberty with history.<br /><br />He edited a collection of <i>The Word’s One Hundred Best Stories</i> and <i>The World’s 50 Best Short Novels</i> during in his stay with <i>Collier’s</i> as fiction editor (1924-1930). When bad health compelled Overton to live in Santa Fe he acted as consulting editor for the weekly. <i>The Philosophy of Fiction</i>, published two years before his death in New York, at forty-two, was an ambitious (and occasionally rather vague and pretentious) analysis of various novels—Will Cather’s <i>A Lost Lady</i> for one—with discussions of the art of fiction in general, and analysis of an imaginary novel written to illustrate his rules. The book leaned heavily on E. M. Forster’s <i>Aspects of the Novel</i> and Percy Lubbock’s <i>Craft of Fiction</i>, and in its “own slightly American way” was worthy to be set beside them, according to the London <i>Times</i>. <br /><br />Overton was survived by widow, Clara (Wallace) Overton of Mohawk, N.Y. Looking even younger than his age of forty-two, he was smooth faced, good looking, and always immaculately dressed.

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