ABOUT THE AUTHOR

GORE VIDAL wrote his first novel, Williwaw, at the age of nineteen while overseas in World War II.

During three decades as a writer, Vidal has written with success and distinction novels, plays, short stories and essays. He has also been a political activist. As a Democratic candidate for Congress from upstate New York, he received the most votes of any Democrat there in half a century. From 1970 to 1972 he was co-chairman of the People’s Party.

In 1948 Vidal wrote the highly praised, highly condemned novel The City and the Pillar, the first American work to deal sympathetically with homosexuality. In the next six years he produced The Judgment of Paris and the prophetic Messiah. In the fifties Vidal wrote plays for live television and films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. One of the television plays became the successful Broadway play Visit to a Small Planet. Directly for the theatre he wrote the prizewinning The Best Man.

In 1964 Vidal returned to the novel. In succession, he created three remarkable works: Julian, Washington, D.C., Myra Breckinridge. Each was a number-one best seller in the United States and England. In 1973 Vidal produced his most popular novel, Burr, as well as the volume of collected essays, Homage to Daniel Shays. In 1976, thirty years after the publication of Williwaw, Vidal wrote 1876, which, along with Burr and Washington, D.C., completed his American Trilogy.

In 1981 he published Creation, generally acclaimed as “his best novel.” Vidal lives in Los Angeles.