Chandler published his first story exactly ninety years ago, in 1933. Thus began a literary career of, among other things, remarkable upward mobility. It started in the pages of “pulp fiction” magazines, so called because they were printed on cheap wood pulp paper. Ultimately Chandler gained entry to the Mount Olympus of American letters, the Library of America, which includes two volumes of his writings. His career began, that is, in a format designed to be thrown away and ended in one intended to last forever.
He was born in Chicago but grew up in England, where he attended the public (in American terms private) secondary school Dulwich College, also the alma mater of another great English-born stylist of popular fiction who worked in America, P. G. Wodehouse, as well, more recently as the noted journalist Tunku Varadarajan. Chandler returned to the United States, held various jobs, began writing, and the rest is American literary history.
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