J. Hyatt Downing

J. Hyatt Downing (1888-1973) was an American writer.[1]

Biography

John Hyatt Downing was born on March 18, 1888 in Granville, Iowa.[1][2][3] He grew up in Hawarden, Iowa and Blunt, South Dakota.[1][2] He worked on his father's ranch and as a railroad surveyor for the Northwestern Railroad, hotel's night clerk and sherpherd in Wyoming, Nebraska and the Black Hills.[1][3] He then graduated from the University of South Dakota in 1913.[1][3]

He worked for the Internal Revenue Service in Aberdeen, South Dakota.[1][3] He married Mary McGinnis and they had one son, John, in 1921.[1] They moved to Carlsbad, New Mexico and managed an alfalfa farm shortly after he had contracted tuberculosis, but returned to the Midwest by 1925.[1][3]

From 1925 to 1930 he published short stories in Scribner's Magazine, while working as an insurance agent in Saint Paul, Minnesota.[1] His first novel, A Prayer for Tomorrow, was a semi-autobiographical account of the ranching culture in South Dakota.[4] He moved to Sioux City, Iowa and wrote four more novels, including Sioux City, which he sold to the movies.[1] For this reason, he moved to Los Angeles, though the movie was never made and he wrote publicity and radio scripts for Twentieth Century Fox instead.[1][3] His last short story was published in Reader's Digest in 1963.[1] His novel Four on the Trail was a paperback Western only released in England.[5]

He died in 1973.[1]

Bibliography

Novels

  • A Prayer for Tomorrow (1938)
  • Hope of Living (1939)
  • Sioux City (1940)
  • Anthony Trant (1941)
  • The Harvest is Late (1944)
  • Garth (unpublished novel)

Short stories

  • And Then It Was Spring
  • Buffalo Grass
  • The Butte
  • Chicken Business
  • Closed Roads (Scribner's Magazine, August 1925)
  • The Distance to Casper (Scribner's Magazine, February, 1927)
  • Dream Street
  • The First Illusion (Scribner's Magazine, May 1930)
  • Furlough (Farm Journal, July 1943)
  • Girl of Many Faces
  • The Great MacLeod (Collier's, 1948)
  • The Harvesters
  • Head of the Family
  • Headwork (Liberty, November 6, 1946)
  • The House on Bad Woman Creek
  • How Does Your Garden Grow
  • If Darryl Zanuck...
  • Just for the Night (Good Housekeeping, October 1940)
  • The Longer Shot
  • A Man Needs a Horse (Collier's, February 23, 1946)
  • The Man Who Killed Jeb Stuart
  • The Marshal's Friend (True, April 1947)
  • Old Cimmarron - On the Santa Fe Trail (Westways, August 1951)
  • One of the Boys
  • Out of the Dark (Liberty, May 10 and 24, 1947)
  • The Return of Willie Scroggs (Country Gentleman, July 1947)
  • Rewards (Scribner's Magazine, April 1926)
  • The Sage of Virgin Creek
  • Sir, the King!
  • Star Without Glamor (Collier's, October 20, 1945)
  • Sun-Kissed Bangtails (Collier's, March 2, 1946)
  • This Is Where He Walked
  • Treasury of the Past (Holiday, November 1946)
  • We Went West (Scribner's Magazine, May 1928)
  • Woman In A Hurry

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 University of Iowa library
  2. 1 2 John R. Milton, The Literature of South Dakota, Dakota Press, 1976, p. 254
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Clarence A. Andrews, A Literary History of Iowa, University of Iowa Press, 1972, pp. 38-42
  4. ↑ Joel Johnson, 'Literature and the Political Cultures of South Dakota', in The Plains Political Tradition: Essays on South Dakota Political Culture, Jon K. Lauck (ed.), John E. Miller (ed.), Donald C. Simmons, Jr. (ed.), Pierre, South Dakota: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2011, p. 169
  5. ↑ Anthony T. Wadden, 'J. Hyatt Downing: The Chronicle of an Era' in Books at Iowa 8, 1977, p. 56
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