Stone, Irving

Stone, Irving (b. Tannenbaum)

(1903–89) writer; born in San Francisco. He changed his surname legally, and was educated at the University of California: Berkeley (B.A. 1923) and the University of Southern California (M.A. 1924). He taught economics at the college level (1923–26), lectured and taught at several other institutions (1948–85), and lived in Los Angeles. Early in his career he wrote plays and detective stories, but after a stay in France, he became a highly successful writer of biographical novels. He is noted for Lust for Life (1934), based on the life of Vincent Van Gogh, and a biography of Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961).

Stone, Irving

 

Born July 14, 1903, in San Francisco. American writer.

Stone graduated from the University of California in 1923 and began his literary career in the 1930’s. Stone’s biographical novels of Van Gogh (Lust for Life, 1934; Russian translation, 1961), Jack London (Sailor on Horseback, 1938; Russian translation, 1960), Michelangelo (The Agony and the Ecstasy, 1961; Russian translation, 1971), and other well-known people have enjoyed widespread popularity. His extensive knowledge of historical facts and his personal research enable Stone to re-create the atmosphere of an age and to reveal the inner world of his heroes.

WORKS

Adversary in the House. New York, 1947.
The Passions of the Mind. Garden City, N.Y., 1971.

REFERENCES

Nikolaev, N. “Gody i knigi I. Stouna.” Literaturnaia Rossiia, 1973, no. 28.
Jackson, J. H. Irving Stone and the Biographical Novel. New York, 1954.