Edwin Moultrie Lanham was born on 11 October 1904 in Weatherford, Texas, in the north central part of the state where his family had settled in 1868.

His grandfather was S. W. T. Lanham, a former Governor of Texas, while his father, Edwin Moultrie Lanham, Senior, died when young Edwin was just four. His mother, Elizabeth Stephens Lanham, remarried soon after the death of her first husband and moved with her new husband to New York City.

In 1928 Edwin Lanham moved to Paris, France where he began his writing career and his first novel 'Sailors Don't Care' was published in that city in 1929. Thereafter his literary career continued until the 1970s and he wrote more than twenty novels and very many short stories.

Probably his most critically acclaimed book was 'The Wind Blew West' (1935) and it is a fictional retelling of the Warren Wagon Train Raid of 1871 and the subsequent trial of the Native American defendants.

In 1940 he received one of the Guggenheim Fellowships, which funded his novel 'Thunder in the Earth' (1942). After World War II he changed from writing literary fiction to writing mystery fiction. These mystery novels continue to remain extremely popular among readers of such fiction.

Three of his stories were also turned into films 'It Shouldn’t Happen to a Dog' (1946), 'If I’m Lucky' (1946) and 'The Senator Was Indiscreet' (1947).

His final novel, 'The Clock at 8.16' was published in 1970 and he died on 24 July 1979.

Gerry Wolstenholme
March 2011