Beer, Thomas, 1889-1940

Thomas Beer was an author of short stories, novels, and non-fiction prose. Beer was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa and raised in Yonkers, New York. He attended Yale University from which he graduated in 1911. Beer enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in France at the end of World War I. Between 1917 and 1936 Beer published a number of short stories in Saturday Evening Post, and while his short stories provided him with financial security, Beer was more interested in his other writing projects. Beer's novels include The Fair Rewards (1922), Sandoval (1924), and The Road to Heaven (1928). Beer is also known for his non-fiction writings, such as The Mauve Decade: American Life at the End of the Nineteenth Century (1926), Hanna (1929), which is a biography of Mark Hanna, and Stephen Crane: A Study in American Letters (1923). While on the surface Beer appearred successful, his personal life and writing career were troubled. While Stephen Crane was a critical success and was lauded as an important resource about Stephen Crane when it was initially published, it is now believed that Beer based the biography on forgeries of his own devising and portrays a number of fictional events and people. In 1938 Beer suffered a nervous breakdown for which he was briefly institutionalized and in 1940 he died of a heart attack (although it's believed his death may have been a suicide).

From the guide to the Thomas Beer collection, 1920-1947, (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)