Ring Lardner

A Sportswriter, humorist, and sardonic observer of the American scene, Ring Lardner, born on March 6, 1885, was raised in the house across the street. One of the best-known American authors in the 1920s, he began his career writing sketches of sporting events for the South Bend News Times and later worked for papers in Chicago and New York, where he wrote several popular syndicated columns. A series of articles published in the Saturday Evening Post starting in 1914 became his best known work. Novelized as You Know Me Al, the articles were letters from a fictional minor league baseball player to his friend and were among the first literary uses of American common speech. Authors Virginia Woolf, John O’Hara, and Ernest Hemingway all praised Lardner’s prose and ability to capture dialogue. Lardner died in New York on September 24, 1933.

[Back]: Ring Lardner married Ellis Abbot in 1911. His mother, Lena B. Lardner, was a published author, and his sons (John, James, Ring Jr., and David) had careers in writing. Lardner also had an interest in music and theater. He moved to New York in 1919 and dabbled in playwriting, coauthoring Elmer the Great and June Moon. After he moved to New York, Lardner maintained his love for Niles and said he could never decide which town he liked better, “on account of them being alike in so many ways.” Considering a choice between spending $2.35 in Niles or New York, he declared, “if I am going to spend that much money why not spend it in Niles where I got my education” and “where you get good meals and they don’t charge you nothing and act like they wisht you would come again instead of looking mean at you because you patronized them.”