Collection RC0719 - Arthur Stringer collection

Arthur Stringer was born in Chatham, Ont. He studied at the University of Toronto between 1892 and 1894 and briefly at Oxford University. In 1900 he married Jobyna Howard, an actress. His second marriage occurred in 1914 to his cousin, Margaret Arbuthnot Stringer. They had three sons, Robert, Barney, and John. Stringer began his career as a journalist and freelance writer.

Up to 1922, he lived primarily on a farm on the north shore of Lake Erie. Thereafter, he moved to and lived in the United States, although he frequently returned to Canada. He contributed extensively to magazines, wrote more than fifteen books of poetry and non-fiction and forty novels, and authored scripts for silent film, including "The Perils of Pauline". His popularity as an author was established in a series of adventure and crime novels, beginning with The Wire Tappers (1906). Most of his novels have an American setting, but he completed a trilogy on the early days of the Canadian West: Prairie Wife (1915), Prairie Mother (1920), and Prairie Child (1921). In 1946 the University of Western Ontario awarded him the honorary degree of LL.D. in recognition of his literary contribution to Canadian letters. He died on 14 September 1950 at Mountain Lakes, New Jersey.