James Norman Hall

Infobox Writer
name = James Norman Hall


imagesize = 210px
caption = Hall in the Lafayette Escadrille, 1917
pseudonym =
birthdate = birth date|1887|4|22|mf=y
birthplace = Colfax, Iowa
deathdate = death date and age|1951|7|5|1887|4|22
deathplace = Tahiti
occupation = Novelist, memoirist
nationality = American
period = 1916 - 1951
genre = Adventure fiction
subject = War memoir
movement =
influences =
influenced =


website = http://www.jamesnormanhallhome.pf/indexen.html

James Norman Hall (April 22, 1887 – July 5, 1951) was an American author best known for the novel "Mutiny on the Bounty".

Biography

He was born in Colfax, Iowa, where he attended the local school. Hall graduated from Grinnell College in 1910 and became a social worker in Boston, Massachusetts, while trying to establish himself as a writer and studying for a Master's degree from Harvard University.

Hall was on vacation in the United Kingdom in the summer of 1914, when World War I began. Posing as a Canadian, he enlisted in the British Army, serving in the Royal Fusiliers as a machine gunner during the Battle of Loos. He was discharged after his true nationality was discovered, and he returned to the United States and wrote his first book, "Kitchener's Mob" (1916), recounting his wartime experiences.

Returning to France, Hall joined the Lafayette Escadrille, a French-American flying corps, before the United States officially entered the war. Hall was awarded the Croix de Guerre with five palms and the Médaille Militaire. When the United States entered the war, Hall was made a Captain in the Army Air Service. There he met another American pilot, Charles Nordhoff. After being shot down, Hall spent the last months of the conflict as a German prisoner of war. He was awarded the French Légion d’Honneur and the American Distinguished Service Cross.

After the war, Hall spent much of his life on the island of Tahiti, where he and Nordhoff, who had also moved there, wrote a number of successful adventure books (including the "Bounty" trilogy), many of which were subsequently made into movies. In 1925 Hall married Sarah (Lala) Winchester, who was part-Polynesian. They had two children: the cinematographer Conrad Hall (1926–2003) and Nancy Hall-Rutgers (born 1930).

Hall died in Tahiti and is buried on the hillside property just above the modest wooden house he and Lala lived in for many years.

elected works

The "Bounty" trilogy, with Charles Nordhoff

* "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1932)
* "Men Against the Sea" (1934)
* "Pitcairn's Island" (1934)
* "The Bounty Trilogy" (illustrated by N. C. Wyeth) (1940)

Other works

* "Kitchener's Mob: The Adventures of an American in the British Army" (1916)
* "High Adventure: A Narrative of Air Fighting in France" (1918)
* "Faery Lands of the South Seas" (with Nordhoff) (1920)
* "Mid-Pacific" (1928)
* "Falcons of France" (with Nordhoff) (1929) Nordhoff and Hall's account of their service in the famed Lafayette Escadrille during WWI
* "The Friends" (1939)
* "Doctor Dogbody's Leg" (1940) [cite book | last=Bleiler | first=Everett | authorlink=Everett F. Bleiler | title=The Checklist of Fantastic Literature | location=Chicago | publisher=Shasta Publishers | pages=139 | date=1948]
* "Under a Thatched Roof" (essays) (1942)
* "Lost Island" (1944)
* "The Far Lands" (1950)
* "My Island Home: An Autobiography" (1952)
* "Sing: A Song of Sixpence" in "125 Years of the Atlantic", p. 303-313

Notes

External links

* [http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3Ajames%20norman%20hall%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts Works by James Norman Hall] , at Internet Archive (scanned books)
* [http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/h#a8797 Works by James Norman Hall] , at Project Gutenberg
* [http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search.php?title=&author=James+Norman+Hall&status=all&action=Search Works by James Norman Hall] , at LibriVox

* [http://www.jamesnormanhallhome.pf/indexen.html Hall family website]