James Thorne Smith, Jr. (March 27, 1892 – June 20, 1934) was an American writer of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction under the byline Thorne Smith. He is best known today for the two Topper novels, comic fantasy fiction involving sex, much drinking and ghosts. With racy illustrations, these sold millions of copies in the 1930s and were equally popular in paperbacks of the 1950s.

Life and career

Smith was born in Annapolis, Maryland, the son of a Navy commodore, and attended Dartmouth College. In 1919, after being discharged from the Navy the same year, he moved to Greenwich Village, where he met Celia Sullivan which he would marry. In need of money, he worked part-time as an advertising agent. He and his wife would soon move to New York, where their first daughter Marion was born on November 14, 1922, and their second daughter June on March 4, 1924. In 1926 Smith achieved meteoric success with the publication of Topper. He was an early resident of Free Acres, a social experimental community developed by Bolton Hall according to the economic principles of Henry George, in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. He died of a heart attack in 1934 at the age of 42 while vacationing in Florida. Smith was a close friend of actor Roland Young, who played the character Topper in several movie adaptations of Smith's work. After Smith's death, Young wrote a short biography, Thorne Smith: His Life and Times, which is now a collector's item.

Works

Skin and Bones, Turnabout, The Night Life of the Gods, The Passionate Witch, The Stray Lamb, The Bishop's Jaegers, The Glorious Pool, and Rain in the Doorway were all published by Armed Services Editions.

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Biographies

Bibliographies and checklists

Libraries

Online editions