Zane Grey

Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939) was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and pulp Fiction that presented an idealized image of the rugged Old West. His novels have been adapted for film a record 115 times.

Pearl Zane Gray was born in Zanesville, Ohio. (He would later drop his first name, and his family changed their name to Grey.) Growing up in Zanesville, a city founded by a maternal ancestor Ebenezer Zane, he developed interests in fishing, baseball and writing, all which would later contribute to his acclaim.

He attended the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship, where he studied dentistry and joined Sigma Nu fraternity; he graduated in 1896. During that time, while playing baseball over the summer in Delphos, Ohio, he was charged with, and quietly settled, a paternity suit, foreshadowing future womanizing behavior. He went on to play minor league baseball with a team in Wheeling, West Virginia. Additionally, his brother, Romer Carl Grey, played briefly in 1903 for the Pittsburgh Pirates.