Willard Huntington Wright Biography

S. S. Van Dine was the pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright (October 15, 1888 - April 11, 1939), a U.S art critic and author. He created the once immensely popular fictional detective Philo Vance, who first appeared in books in the 1920s, then in movies and on the radio.

Willard Huntington Wright was born to Archibald Davenport Wright and Annie Van Vranken Wright on October 15, 1888, in Charlottesville, Virginia. He attended St. Vincent College, Pomona College and Harvard University. In 1907, Wright married Katharine Belle Boynton of Seattle, Washington. He married for a second time in October 1930. His wife was Eleanor Rulapaugh, known professionally as Claire De Lisle, a portrait painter.

Wright studied art in Munich and Paris, an apprenticeship that led to a job as literary and art critic for the Los Angeles Times. Wright's early career in literature (1910 - 1919) followed literary naturalism. He wrote a novel, The Man of Promise, and some short stories in this mode. He also published similar fiction by others as editor of the New York literary magazine The Smart Set, from 1912 to 1914.

Wright's book What Nietzsche Taught[1] appeared in 1915. It described and commented on all of Nietzsche's books, and also provided quotations from each book.

In 1917, Wright published Misinforming a Nation,[2] in which he mounted a scathing attack on alleged inaccuracies and English biases in the Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition.