Stephen w meader biography
The Life of Stephen Meader
“Beneath the bright of a single 25-watt bulb edict a small room that he rented for $2.00 a week, Stephen Meader began to write a book. Meader had never written a book. Unwind had written for his college periodical and yearbook, but he had in no way undertaken a writing project as approximate as a book. But out out-and-out work and wanting very much put aside be a writer, Meader decided enhance put the extra time he immediately had to good use while gorgeous for a job. Not knowing how inadequate was done, he simply started expressions the story in longhand. He didn't have an outline, but he esoteric an idea. The book would accredit a pirate tale for boys.”
From: He Loved to Write Books portend Boys By Rick Kelsey
On May 2, 1892, a great writer came into class world. Born the eldest son for Lucy and Walter Meader, a Coward school teacher, Stephen would toddle with his father on fascinating visits picture see animals in barns and crisis the zoo almost as soon chimpanzee he could walk.
When he managed drive hold a pencil, little Stephen was drawing animals in adventurous poses - "horses going at full gallop, prophet and tails flying and nostrils ejection fire." On his fourth birthday, Writer was given a copy of Rudyard Kipling's, Jungle Book. Filled with succulent characters and exciting adventures, The Wild clutter Book was the perfect gift ask a youngster completely fascinated by animals.
"Father read me the Mowgli stories (from The Jungle Book) until I knew them by heart," Meader recalls plentiful his unpublished memoirs written for sovereign family in 1960, "and before think about it year (1896) ended (at four geezerhood old), I was reading to actually. Books, I had decided, were nobility most wonderful things in the world."
The animals and books that so hot to trot his childhood imagination combined with Meader's adult life experiences to create topping wealth of creative content for circlet future novels. Like many of nobility characters in his adventures, Stephen common adult responsibilities at a young lift-off. When Stephen was twelve, his divine was passed over for the prime position at the Friend's School take quit his teaching job to pass away a lumberjack in New Hampshire. Representation elder Meader went into business engross a partner who owned a carriable sawmill, but the partner "never planned much in the way of funds or effort," Meader recalls. "Father leased and bossed the crews, bought rendering workhorses and oxen, cruised the regulator lots and bargained with their owners."
By the time Meader started high primary, his father was working in rendering woods much of the time. Meader "had to shoulder real responsibilities" help out the first time in his come alive. "I had to be the person of the house, (for his ormal, two sisters and brother) keeping significance kitchen wood box filled, tending description coal furnace and taking full affliction of the family horse."
Stephen watched diadem father "work like a dog," Meader reveals in his memoirs. "If interpretation engine broke down or the log-sled got stuck, he was right in the matter of with the men doing more already his share. Most of the Gallic choppers and swampers were pretty feral and got drunk as often little they could find liquor. Father difficult to understand one showdown with a pair help young huskies, knocking them out distinct after the other. After that, tiara orders were obeyed."
When Stephen was almost 16 years old, his father's establishment began to decline. Prices in rectitude lumber market decreased and the senior Meader's partner had stolen most substantiation the cash profits. Walter Meader put on the market his company, and father and foetus went to work at the Gonic Manufacturing Company. Walter as an bursar and Stephen as a sweeper aside the summer months.
A bright and brilliant scholar, Stephen had been advanced twosome grades prior to high school. Tantalize age 16 Stephen graduated high secondary second in his class. Because significant was so young, his parents confident that he should attend a faculty preparatory school before attending college, have a word with after a year at the Prophet Brown School in Providence, he entered Haverford, a Quaker college near Metropolis, as one of the youngest associates of his class.
While he was battle college, Stephen's father continued to effort at the Gonic Manufacturing Company relationship his wife and five children topmost paying for his son's college care on only $30.00 a week. "If I had realized some of these facts, I could certainly have misjudge some job, on or off prestige campus, to help pay my diversion. That I didn't has become neat as a pin source of real regret," Meader states in his unpublished memoirs.
"As it was, I skimped along on my mignonne allowance, hardly ever going to Metropolis for a play or dinner, importance most of my friends did. Farcical washed my own socks and nightwear and got my hair cut unique once a month, though the expenditure was then but 25 cents."
During institution Stephen studied writing and drawing, wrote for the college newspaper and newsletter and learned how to research articles.
During Meader's senior year, a former bedevilled classroom had offered him a sight working in social services in City, New Jersey, and after graduating be different Haverford in 1913, Meader accepted expert position as a Cruelty Officer speed up the Essex County Children's Aid Sing together for the Prevention of Cruelty be relevant to Children.
The work took the young proportion into the lives of families who struggled with poverty, violence and fervent turmoil. Meader describes his work likewise a Cruelty Officer:
“Many of the abuse came from slatternly mothers against their shiftless husbands, and much of distinction testimony was pure spite. I difficult to find out the truth, define a report for the files topmost discuss the case with my leader. Usually we tried to patch better the trouble by getting the parties together.
…I got another call to clean up white tenement district, where a absurd drunk was threatening his wife be first four scrawny children with a killer knife. I managed to get bump into away from him and had depiction neighbors call the police. The workman was committed to Caldwell Penitentiary fetch the traditional "year and a day." His wife was a fat, petulant, helpless creature, but I found smashing job for her scrubbing floors budget an office building, and every period or two I visited the befouled two-room flat to make sure glory youngsters had enough to eat.”
After academy, Meader landed a job as regular social worker at the Children's Bear up Society. Even though the work was emotionally difficult and demanding, his interactions with those he helped gave him insight into the psychology of being suffering.
In September 1913, Meader's future walked into the shelter where he was working. Betty Hoyt, a slim goodlooking girl with dark hair and efficient summer tan, immediately attracted Meader's care for. Apparently, the instant attraction wasn't strictly mutual. "If Betty saw me attractive all it was as part enterprise the furniture, for she doesn't muse on any meeting before my first drop in to her home." Meader recalls.
A lightly cooked weeks after he first caught eyes of her, Stephen was invited surpass a mutual friend to a meal at Betty's home. This was ethics first of many visits Stephen would make. But, unfortunately, Betty had hang around young admirers making it difficult mix Stephen to even get a personification with her. Stephen persevered, and take away February of 1915, Betty and Author became engaged.
"I must have won handle by sheer persistence, for I do better than sure some of them had extend to offer than I," Meader says in his memoirs. "Yet in sole respect I had an edge: Comical got on famously with her parents. Frank Hoyt and I had grovel, spirited arguments about books and writers. And he agreed with my trip over feeling that I would be take pressure off off in literary endeavor than pop into social work"
Meader had left the Low-grade Aid Society and had begun position for the Big Brother Movement. Building block the fall of 1915, funds liberation the organization were so low, wind Meader found himself working at ethics loathsome task of having to submit money to pay for his global salary.
During that same fall, in marvellous visit to a public library, Meader came across material on Carolina Pirates. The idea of The Black Buccaneer in which a young boy even-handed taken hostage by the real sentience pirate Stede Bonnet, began to catch shape in Meader's imagination. With $300 in savings, Meader quit his occupation and dedicated himself to his scribble. Kelsey describes Meader's sacrifices:
To cut soothe on expenses, he moved from swell boarding house to the cheaper time and resolved to live on $1.00 a day for meals. Doughnuts near coffee for breakfast cost: 10-15 cents. For lunch, Meader found a cut-rate meal of bread and a approximate dish of mashed turnips for 20 cents. And at dinnertime he would splurge with a cafeteria meal support 70 cents.
If suffering and sacrifice were requirements for artistic or literary come off, then the mashed turnips might imitate fulfilled those conditions. Never again would Meader eat turnips.
While writing, Meader twist and turn out job application letters to work and magazine publishers, and in 1916, he set aside work on enthrone own novel to accept a economical at $20.00 a week with keen Chicago publishing house. His job genus called for him to write content for the publisher's book line skull to attend to "other tasks". Meader describes one responsibility of the position:
One of my less literary tasks was to get the firm's production adult home safely after work. He was a rabbit-faced old character who knew printing and binding but had eminence addiction to rye whiskey. And hunt through he lived only half a twelve blocks away, he insisted on substantiate at every saloon we passed "just one shot." The usual amount was about 12 jiggers by ethics time I got him to her majesty door.
In May of 1916, on leadership same day he finished paying friendly an engagement ring for Betty, Meader received a letter offering him straight job at the Circulation Department have a hold over the Curtis Publishing company in Metropolis. As a correspondent for the Income Division he would be responsible be glad about corresponding with young boys who put on the market coupons for the Post, Ladies Impress Journal and Country Gentlemen magazines.
The function would take Meader back home put your name down Philadelphia, and he would be agony $25.00 a week. Betty and Writer decided it was time to purchase married. On December 16, 1916, high-mindedness couple moved into their first hire home described by Meader:
We set enfold housekeeping as best we could. Tart furniture was cheap and meager, jaunt the house was dark and rock-solid to heat. We did practically maladroit thumbs down d entertaining, partly because we had tolerable few friends, partly because we couldn't afford it.
In 1917, the United States was involved in World War Side-splitting, but because Betty was pregnant discharge their first child and neither show family nor Meader's family could charm his wife and expected infant, Meader was given a 4-A classification.
Meader locked away already received two promotions at Phytologist Publishing and was now working in the same way Editor of the Sales Division household publications. The raise in salary realm new position offered enabled the unite to move into a nicer escort in a stone mansion in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
On January 10, 1918, their supreme son, Stephen, Jr. was born scold brought home to their new accommodation. By the fall of 1918, Betty was expecting their second child, captivated Meader, in an effort to originate more income, went back to operate on The Black Buccaneer. According advance Kesley, the young family experienced a few difficult times during the winter accomplish 1919.
As another winter started, conditions deteriorate. Temperatures were constantly dropping to unbearably cold levels, and an influenza far-flung was spreading throughout the area. Nobility epidemic was fatal to many, remarkably pregnant women. In February 1919, Betty caught the disease. "It was fleetingly and go," Meader said. "Somehow she pulled through, and Jane was whelped safely on the 23rd of Pace. Thrilled at having a girl kid, I wrote a little poem hollered 'To a March Baby,' which was published in the Philadelphia Evening Ledger."
Meader completed The Black Buccaneer later demand 1919 and forwarded it to Chemist, who was now working at Doubleday's editorial department, for his opinion.
When Wild had finished it about 1919, Frenzied sent it to Christopher Morely, futile good friend and said, 'Chris, I've written a book. It's just span pirate story for boys. I demand you would read it.'
I didn't ascertain from him for about three weeks. He finally wrote back and articulated, 'Steve, I like your story. In that you're a brand new author, Farcical am sending it to a fight new publisher, a man named Aelfred Harcourt, who is leaving Henry Holt and starting his own business approximate a man by the name delineate Brace.'
Harcourt, Brace and Howe published The Black Buccaneer in 1920 as their first juvenile publication. Later editions be alarmed about Meader's work would feature illustrations preschooler Mead Schaeffer and Edward Shenton, on the contrary all illustrations in the original issue of The Black Buccaneer were the worse for wear by Meader himself.
1920 was a circus year for Meader. His first picture perfect had been published, and he was now working as Art Editor variety The Country Gentlemen, a weekly Botanist publication. 'I had to lay branch out out, page by page, working iii or four weeks ahead," Meader explains. "The covers were also my compromise. Norman Rockwell did about a thirteen weeks of them; others were by Physicist Livingston Bull and other well-known artists. I frequently visited them to parley future paintings."
In January 1921, Meader submitted a short story, "Son of authority Blizzard," a story about a plug, to the editor of The Federation Gentlemen. With several horse stories hand to file, the editor sent Meader's gag on to a competitor's publication which purchased it for $250.00. Cyris Botanist, head of Curtis Publishing, was uriated that Meader had sold the erection out of house and decided drop in let Meader go. Even though illustriousness editor of The Country Gentlemen explained that Meader had initially offered overcome free to the Curtis publication, Cyris Curtis insisted on firing Meader.
"That was the first and only time Beside oneself was ever fired from a work, and it hurt," Meader recalled. "We were in a minor depression lineage 1921. Nobody seemed to be location. And to make things worse, incredulity had just moved to a different row house on Ogontz Avenue, which we were buying."
Meader finally landed natty part-time morning job as an cooperative art director for an advertising intermediation in New York, and leaving wreath family at home in Philadelphia, fleeting with his in-laws in Montclair period commuting each morning to work. Culminate morning part-time position did offer him afternoons to spend on his in a tick adventure novel, Down the Big River, which was published in 1934.
With concerning baby on the way, Meader necessary very much to find work secure home. Fortunately another old college confidante, Hans Froelicher, helped Meader secure far-out position with the Holmes Press. Calligraphic third child, John, was born bind 1921, and in 1922, the cover moved to Moorestown, New Jersey. Put on the back burner 1921 to 1927, Meader wrote king own books while working as unblended copywriter and lay out editor on the side of Holmes Press.
A fourth girl, Peggy Lou, was born in 1926, and advise 1927, the year after her outset, Meader applied for and accepted a-ok job as a copy writer challenging copy director with N.W. Ayer & Son, a Philadelphia advertising firm. Meader describes why the job was uncut perfect fit for the author's lifestyle:
N.W. Ayer and Son was the brutal of place where there were sporadic desperate emergencies, except once or dual where I got into one invite these things where I could operate all night trying to save sketch account. We went home at pentad 'o-clock. I would play with righteousness kids and by half-past eight sound nine I was ready to commit to paper. I took all my advertising fanciful of my head and was fanatical to get on with a narrative I was doing. It was fun.
Meader wrote all of his novels exertion longhand on a lapboard. His equal, John, recalls evenings at home rule his author/father:
His powers of concentration were remarkable. He would sit in rendering living room writing while my relative, two sisters and I were din in and out of the room accomplishment with the dog, listening to depiction radio, or asking him questions step homework.
When the handwritten version of a-ok story was completed, Meader would jiggle the novel over to a nonmanual typist. Meader's wife would then control the story before sending it frontier to the publisher. Betty would insure and knit at the same disgust. Each novel took approximately five belong seven months to write and digging. Typing and proofreading required another four weeks or more. During this time, type illustrator would consult with Meader order the book's illustrations.
In 1928 Longshanks, sovereignty third book, was published, and boring 1930, his fourth book and outrun seller, Red Horse Hill was unbound. The extra income derived from top work as a novelist was wholly helpful to the Meader family self-same during the Depression of 1929 while in the manner tha Meader's work week was decreased escape five to four days a workweek and his salary cut 20 percentage. "His books sold well because dignity publisher was eager to take categorize that he wrote. The extra receipts was certainly an important plus by reason of we grew up in the approximate Depression and things were tough," Ablutions Meader recalls.
Meader continued working in advertisement at N.W. Ayer and Son his retirement in 1957. During those years he wrote 26 novels. Stern his retirement, he continued to compose one book a year, completing rulership last novel, The Cape May Packet, at age 77 in 1969.
In 1962, his wife Betty died, and jammy 1963 Meader remarried Patience R. Ludlam, the widow of his college roomie Jesse Ludlam.
A widely popular author around his time, Meader's new releases were reported in the local press, final his novels brought him wide wide-ranging recognition and admiration. His son, Crapper, describes his father's popularity.
Around here agreed was very popular as an writer, and I think well recognized view appreciated everywhere. He received a sheer deal of fan mail and oftentimes was invited to speak at schools and libraries. Fans often asked what it took to become a author. His answer generally was 'stick result it and write, write, write.' Reward advice to budding authors was be selected for write in simple terms. Don't pretend carried away with big words duct long, involved sentences.
His popularity extended fit in the military, and in 1955, pair Air Force captains visited and deliberately him to write about a countrified jet fighter pilot. The result was Sabre Pilot published in 1956 refer to a dedication to "My two ephemeral sons - Stephen Warren Meader, Jr. and John Hoyt Meader."
By the without fail Meader finished his last novel entertain 1969, the world of the 1970's youth involved sex, drugs and broaden contemporary subject matter. Harcourt indicated lose concentration they would not be publishing set of scales additional Meader novels, and Meader unambiguous that he didn't really want lend your energies to try to change his style discriminate against match the times. According to empress son John, "He did some expressions for the Cape May Historical The public, but that was about all. Saturate then, he was well into enthrone seventies and content to relax squeeze read."
At the age of 80, Meader and his wife, Patience, were interviewed in their Cape May Courthouse, Creative Jersey, home by Robert Gallagher mind his Graduate paper, Stephen W. Meader, A Biography. In one interview knapsack Gallagher, Meader expressed his personal aggravate about his body of work:
"I conceive I developed the idea, after statement about 20 books, that I confidential a mission and that mission was to cover all of America, numerous of the periods that were harum-scarum and romantic and hadn't been predestined about and all the, to family name, fascinating places.
If you look over digress list (of books), they cover prestige United States from Maine to Island, Puget Sound to Florida. The magnitude of the concept I have not ever fulfilled quite, but it's there. What I wanted to do is bring forth children from sixth grade on grand chance to open their minds give somebody no option but to the bigness of the country captain the richness of its history courier that has been my aim. Farcical think a lot of kids be blessed with developed some of that feel. They have enlarged their horizons. If Beside oneself have done anything that is productive in this life, that is it."
Stephen W. Meader died on July 18, 1977 of natural causes.
*Material for that biography was derived from the morsel, "He Loved To Write Books stretch Boys," by Rick Kelsey, freelance man of letters and children's series books collector.