Frank Harris (14 February 1856 – 26 August 1931) was an Irish-American editor, novelist,short story writer, journalist and publisher, who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day.
Born in Ireland, he emigrated to the United States early in life, working in a variety of unskilled jobs before attending theUniversity of Kansas to study law. After graduation, he quickly tired of his legal career and returned to Europe in 1882. He traveled in continental Europe before settling in London to pursue a career in journalism. In 1921, in his sixties, he became a US citizen. Though he attracted much attention during his life for his irascible, aggressive personality, editorship of famous periodicals, and friendship with the talented and famous, he is remembered mainly for his multiple-volume memoirMy Life and Loves, which was banned in countries around the world for its sexual explicitness.
Harris was bornJames Thomas Harris in 1855, inGalway, Ireland, to Welsh parents. His father, Thomas Vernon Harris, was a naval officer fromFishguard, Pembrokeshire, Wales.[1] While living with his older brother he was, for a year or more, a pupil atThe Royal School, Armagh. At the age of 12 he was sent toWales to continue his education as aboarder at theRuabon Grammar School in Denbighshire, a time he was to remember later inMy Life and Loves. Harris was unhappy at the school and ran away within a year.
He emigrated to the United States in late 1869, arriving in New York City virtually penniless.[2] The 14-year-old took a series of odd jobs to support himself, working first as aboot black, aporter, a general laborer, and a construction worker on the erection of theBrooklyn Bridge.[2] Harris would later turn these early occupational experiences into art, incorporating tales from them into his bookThe Bomb.[2]
From New York Harris moved to theAmerican Midwest, settling in the country's second largest city, Chicago,[2] where he took a job as a hotel clerk and eventually a manager. Owing to Chicago's central place in the meat packing industry, Harris made the acquaintance of various cattlemen, who inspired him to leave the big city to take up work as acowboy.[2] Eventually growing tired of life in the cattle industry, he enrolled at theUniversity of Kansas,[2] where he studied law and earned a degree, gaining admission to the Kansas state bar association.[2]
In 1878, inBrighton, England, he married Florence Ruth Adams, who died the following year.[citation needed]
Harris was not cut out to be a lawyer and soon decided to turn his attention to literature. He moved to England in 1882, later traveling to various cities in Germany,Austria, France, andGreece on his literary quest. He worked briefly as an American newspaper correspondent before settling down in England to seriously pursue the vocation of journalism.[2]
Harris first came to general notice as the editor of a series of London publications, including theEvening News, theFortnightly Review and theSaturday Review, the last-named being the high point of his journalistic career, withH. G. Wells andGeorge Bernard Shaw as regular contributors.[3]
From 1908 to 1914 Harris concentrated on working as a novelist, authoring a series of popular books such asThe Bomb,The Man Shakespeare, andThe Yellow Ticket and Other Stories.[2] With the advent ofWorld War I in the summer of 1914, Harris decided to return to the United States.
From 1916 to 1922 he edited the U.S. edition ofPearson's Magazine, a popular monthly which combined short story fiction withsocialist-tinted features on contemporary news topics. One issue of the publication was banned from the mails by Postmaster GeneralAlbert S. Burleson during the period of American participation in theGreat War.[2] Despite this Harris managed to navigate the delicate situation which faced the left-wing press and to keepPearson's Magazine functioning and solvent during the war years.
Harris became an American citizen in April 1921. In 1922 he travelled to Berlin to publish his best-known work, his autobiographyMy Life and Loves (published in four volumes, 1922–1927). It is notorious for its graphic descriptions of Harris' purportedsexual encounters and for its exaggeration of the scope of his adventures and his role in history. Years later,Time magazine reflected in its 21 March 1960 issue "Had he not been a thundering liar, Frank Harris would have been a great autobiographer ... he had the crippling disqualification that he told the truth, asMax Beerbohm remarked, only 'when his invention flagged'." A fifth volume, supposedly taken from his notes but of doubtful provenance, was published in 1954, long after his death.[4]
Harris also wrote short stories and novels, two books onShakespeare, a series of biographical sketches in five volumes under the titleContemporary Portraits and biographies of his friendsOscar Wilde andGeorge Bernard Shaw. His attempts at playwriting were less successful: onlyMr. and Mrs. Daventry (1900) (which may have been based on an idea byOscar Wilde[5]) was produced on the stage.
Married three times, Harris died at 9 Rue de la Buffa inNice aged 75 on 26 August 1931, of a heart attack. He was subsequently buried at Cimetière Sainte-Marguerite, adjacent to theCimetière Caucade, in the same city.[6]
Just after his death a biography written byHugh Kingsmill (pseudonym of Hugh Kingsmill Lunn) was published.[7]
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In 1920, French writer and diplomatPaul Morand met an aged Frank Harris inNice and borrowed much of his personality to create the character of O'Patah, a larger than life writer, publisher and Irish patriot, "the last of the Irish bards" in his short storyLa nuit de Portofino kulm (part of the famed collection of short storiesFermé la nuit) published in 1923 byGallimard.
In 1922,Whittaker Chambers published a "blasphemous" and "sacrilegious" playlet called "A Play for Puppets" inThe Morningside, a Columbia University student magazine, based on Frank Harris' 1919 playMiracle of the Stigmata, for which Chambers quit school to avoid expulsion. ("The greater part of it is so plainly sacrilegious that it cannot be reproduced.")[8]
In 1929,Cole Porter's song "After All, I'm Only a Schoolgirl" references Harris and "My Life and Loves", in a tale about a girl who is learning about adult relationships from a private tutor.[9]
In 1936, Harris appeared as a character in the playOscar Wilde, byLeslie &Sewell Stokes, first produced at London's Gate Theatre Studio (1936) and later at the Fulton Theatre, New York, in 1938, in both cases starringRobert Morley in the title role.
In 1958, the feature filmCowboy is an adaptation of the semi-autobiographical novelMy Reminiscences as a Cowboy. Harris is played byJack Lemmon.
In 1960, he is seen as a minor character inThe Trials of Oscar Wilde played byPaul Rogers. Harris had specifically warned Wilde against prosecuting Queensberry for criminal libel, which led to his downfall.
In a 1972 episode ofThe Edwardians, he was played byJohn Bennett.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson meet Harris inNicholas Meyer's 1976 novelThe West End Horror. Watson comments on Harris' habit of always speaking very loudly.
A volume by Frank Harris held up the couch in "Six Big Boobies" (1985) episode of'Allo 'Allo!.
On television, Harris was played byLeonard Rossiter in a 1978 BBC Play of the Week:Fearless Frank, or, Tidbits From The Life Of An Adventurer.
In 1980, a musical stage adaptation ofFearless Frank briefly ran on Broadway at thePrincess Theatre, withNiall Toibin in the starring role. It had book and lyrics byAndrew Davies, music by Dave Brown, and was directed byRobert Gillespie. The production ran for 13 previews and 12 performances.[10][11]
Harris appears as avampire inKim Newman's 1992 novelAnno Dracula, as the mentor and vampire sire of one of the novel's main characters.
He is a character in the 1997Tom Stoppard playThe Invention of Love, which deals with the life ofA. E. Housman and the Oscar Wilde trials.
He appears as a close friend ofOscar Wilde in the award-winning play byMoisés Kaufman:Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde.
He appears in the first episode of the 2001 miniseriesThe Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells, rejecting a story from Wells for being too long and too preposterous.
In the ITV seriesMr Selfridge (2013),Samuel West plays a newspaper editor and publisher called Frank Edwards, a character based on Frank Harris.[12]
In the crime comedy Pulp,Michael Caine plays a novelist who someone compares to Frank Harris, in which Caine glibly replies, "Frank was a novice."
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