Ross Lockridge Jr.
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Ross Lockridge, Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Lockridge in 1947 Lockridge in 1947 | |
| Born | Ross Franklin Lockridge, Jr. April 25, 1914 Bloomington, Indiana, USA |
| Died | March 6, 1948 (aged 33) Bloomington, Indiana, USA |
| Occupation | novelist |
| Nationality |  United States |
| Alma mater | Indiana University |
| Period | 1948 |
| Genre | Historical fiction |
| Notable works | Raintree County |
| Website | |
| http://www.raintreecounty.com | |
Ross Franklin Lockridge, Jr., (April 25, 1914 – March 6, 1948) was an American novelist of the mid-20th century. He is noted for Raintree County (1948), a widely praised novel which many readers and critics considered a contender for the "Great American Novel".
Biography
Lockridge was born and raised in Bloomington, Indiana. He graduated from Indiana University in 1935 with the highest average in the history of the university. Lockridge married and had four children. He was a cousin of Mary Jane Ward.
Lockridge's novel Raintree County was published in early 1948, to great critical acclaim. It traces the 19th-century history of a fictional midwestern county through the reminiscences of its protagonist, John Wickliff Shawnessy.
Suffering from severe depression, Lockridge committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning shortly after the novel's publication. His grave is in Rose Hill Cemetery in Bloomington.
In 1957, MGM released the motion picture version of "Raintree County" starring Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Eva Marie Saint. It received fair to good reviews and did moderately well at the box office.
References
- Leggett, John (1974). Ross and Tom: Two American Tragedies. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-21733-X.
- Lockridge, Larry (1994). Shade of the Raintree: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr. New York: Viking Penguin. ISBN 0-670-85440-9.
- Lockridge, Ernest (2004). Travels with Ernest: Crossing the Literary/Sociological Divide. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-7591-0596-0.
- Lockridge, Ernest (2011). Skeleton Key to the Suicide of My Father, Ross Lockridge, Jr., Author of Raintree County. Charleston: Global Enterprises. ISBN 978-1-4609-0976-8.
External links
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- 1914 births
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- 20th-century novelists
- American novelists
- American historical novelists
- Indiana University alumni
- People from Bloomington, Indiana
- Suicides by carbon monoxide poisoning
- Suicides in Indiana
- Writers from Indiana
- Writers who committed suicide
- American novelist, 20th-century birth stubs