orig. Pearl Grey
born Jan. 31, 1872, Zanesville, Ohio, U.S.
died Oct. 23, 1939, Altadena, Calif.
U.S. novelist.
He began his career as a dentist. He first visited the American West in 1906, setting his first novel, The Heritage of the Desert (1910), there. His second novel, Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), was also set in the West and became the most popular of all his books; it helped launch a new literary genre, the western . Grey subsequently wrote more than 80 westerns, including Code of the West (1934). He remains one of the best-selling authors of all time.