Frank Harris

Frank Harris (14 February 1856 – 26 August 1931) was an Irish-American editor, novelist, short story writer, journalist and publisher, who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day.

Born in Ireland, he emigrated to the United States early in life, working in a variety of unskilled jobs before attending the University of Kansas to study law.

[2] The 14-year-old took a series of odd jobs to support himself, working first as a boot black, a porter, a general laborer, and a construction worker on the erection of the Brooklyn Bridge.

[2] From New York Harris moved to the American Midwest, settling in the country's second largest city, Chicago,[2] where he took a job as a hotel clerk and eventually a manager.

Owing to Chicago's central place in the meat packing industry, Harris made the acquaintance of various cattlemen, who inspired him to leave the big city to take up work as a cowboy.

[3] From 1908 to 1914 Harris concentrated on working as a novelist, authoring a series of popular books such as The Bomb, The Man Shakespeare, and The Yellow Ticket and Other Stories.

[2] Despite this Harris managed to navigate the delicate situation which faced the left-wing press and to keep Pearson's Magazine functioning and solvent during the war years.

Years later, Time magazine reflected in its 21 March 1960 issue "Had he not been a thundering liar, Frank Harris would have been a great autobiographer ... he had the crippling disqualification that he told the truth, as Max Beerbohm remarked, only 'when his invention flagged'."

[4] Harris also wrote short stories and novels, two books on Shakespeare, a series of biographical sketches in five volumes under the title Contemporary Portraits and biographies of his friends Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw.

[7] In 1920, French writer and diplomat Paul Morand met an aged Frank Harris in Nice and borrowed much of his personality to create the character of O'Patah, a larger than life writer, publisher and Irish patriot, "the last of the Irish bards" in his short story La nuit de Portofino kulm (part of the famed collection of short stories Fermé la nuit) published in 1923 by Gallimard.

")[8] In 1929, Cole Porter's song "After All, I'm Only a Schoolgirl" references Harris and "My Life and Loves", in a tale about a girl who is learning about adult relationships from a private tutor.

In 1980, a musical stage adaptation of Fearless Frank briefly ran on Broadway at the Princess Theatre, with Niall Toibin in the starring role.