Evening star., 1944-05-25
Harold Bell Wright,
Famous Novelist,
Dies Of Pneumonia
BY the Associated Press,

DIeS OF pneumonia
BY the Associated Press.
SAN DIEGO, Calf. May 25.-
Harold Bell Wright, whose prolific
works once made him the most wide
iy read novelist in the The
Winning of Barbara Worth" sold T.
600. 900 copies-died yesterday at 70.
The author of THE Shepherd of
the Hills. The Calling of Dan Mat
thews,' That Printer of Udell's,"
When a Mans Man" "The Eyes
of the World" and many other books
died of bronchial pneumonia in a
clinic at. LasJolla, exclusive ocean,
front residential district.
In his early 2os Mr.. Wright went
to the Missouri Ozarks, later a set
ting for some of his works, to paint.
A chance filling of pulpit turned
him to the ministry While a
preacher, he wrote THAT Printer of
Udell's" in 1903. He gave up preach
ing in 1908 to come to California,
where he wrote books which he
viewed as sermons on sincere life
and honest work.
Novels Greatly in Demand.
BY 1917, his novels were in more
public demand than those of any
other writer of the day. They won
him a fortune, but he always main
tanned contempt for wealth. He
retired from writing in 1884.
Some builders of fiction 60 in for
all manner of architectural filigree,
scroll work and f1uted columns" he
once said.
II pay no heed to those things.
My work-and I say it with all
modesty-is the structural steel, the
anatomy as it were, and this I clothe
with what call life" Last month
he sold his $4,000 ranch home at
Escondidio, known as Quiet Hills
Farms.
He is survived by his widow, Mrs.
Winifred Mary Wright, who was at
the bedside when he died, and by
two sons, Gilbert Munger Wright.
Malibu Beach, Calf, and Norman
Hall Wright, New York City.
Practiced What He Preached.
Although reputed to have made a
million dollars with his fiction. Mr..
Wright preferred the background of
the Ozarks. where once he preached
to woodsmen. From the pulpit and
through his stories he preached a
life of sincerity and of sincere honest
work-and practiced what he
preached.
In simple, penetrating portrayal
of the lives of wholesome people
who get away from religious cant,
lay the strength of Mr.. Wright as
fictionist. That vast mass of hu-
manity known as the common
people made up the bulk of the
authors public. He wrote of what
he liked to term life"
Born in Rome, N. Y.
Mr.. Wright was born in Rome,
N. Y, May 4, 1872, and attended
Hiram College in Ohio. Before he
was 81, he took brushes and tubes
and went out to the Ozark Noun
tains. His paintings gave him a
bare living and by 1897 he had left
the commercial field for the ministry.
From a pastorate at Pierce City,
Mo-, Mr.. Wright went to churches
in Pittsburg, Kans.; Lebanon, Mo-,
and Redlands, Calf.
Mr.. Wright married Frances E..
Long of Buffalo on July 18, 1899,
and to them were born three sons.
Gilbert, Norman and the late Paul
Williams Wright. On August s,
1920, he was married again, to Mrs.
Winifred Mary Potter Duncan of
Los Angeles.
Mr.. Wright first learned to know
books when he was IA years old.
He worked in a bookstore in Hiram,
Ohio, and for his pay had the privi-
lege of reading as many books as he
could lay his hands on. His tastes
were catholic. He read Buffalo
Bill" and Shakespeare. Then he
read Ruskin and decided to be a
painter.
In the Ozark Mountains, near
Lebanon, where he went to paint,
friends asked him to take the pulpit
of church when the minister failed
to appear.
Il thought" said the author, that
I could do as well as the minister I
had heard few Sundays before on
the text, 'Ye are the salt of the
earth, but if the salt has lost its
SAVIOUR, wherewith shall it be
salted?'
so I mounted the rostrum and
preached. They kept me preaching
for years"
No College Product.
Mr.. Wright was no product of a
college or any theological seminary.
His sermons were simply worded
and plain food for plain people.
When he gave up a preaching
career and went to California, to Ell
Centre in the Imperial Valley, he
wrote THE Calling of Dan Mat
thews" $1,000, THE Uncrowned
King" G91O and The Winning of
Barbara Worth" 091D. His Chi
lcagO puDllSner JrleO 10 get MIN to
live in Chicago or New York, where
the popular novelists of the day
lived.
Il told him I couldn't think of it,"
Mr.. Wright said. II preferred the
desert; the city overwhelmed me.
went to Chicago once and I hadn't
been there an hour when I wanted
to know when the next train left for
the West"
Mr.. Wright never attempted to ex-
plain his rise to prominence. He
first started to "scribble," he said,
while he was preaching in Pittsburg
He startled literary aspirants of
the day by remarking that the first
essential for the production of fic-
ton is great big waste basket,
that an empty basket is literary
rebuke.
He acknowledged that his novels
were thinly veiled sermons. He laid
stress on the idea that in most
. churches "the religion of Christ is