Wright was active in avant-garde cultural circles in pre-World War I New York, and under the pen name (which he originally used to conceal his identity) he created the fictional detective Philo Vance, a sleuth and aesthete who first appeared in books in the 1920s, then in films and on the radio.

His younger brother, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, became a respected painter, one of the first American abstract artists, and co-founder (with Morgan Russell) of the school of modern art known as "Synchromism".

[3] At age 21, Wright began his professional writing career as literary editor of the Los Angeles Times,[4] where – describing himself as "'Esthetic expert and psychological shark" – he was known for his scathing book reviews and irreverent opinions.

He was fired from that position when the magazine's conservative owner felt that Wright was intentionally provoking their middle-class readership with his interest in unconventional and often sexually explicit fiction.

An attempt to popularize the German philosopher with skeptical American audiences, it described and commented on all of Nietzsche's books and provided quotations from each work.

[citation needed] In 1917, Wright published Misinforming a Nation,[7] in which he mounted a blistering attack on alleged inaccuracies and British biases in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition.

A Germanophile, Wright did not support America's decision to join the Allied cause in World War I, and he was blackballed from journalism for more than two years after an overzealous secretary (erroneously) accused him of spying for Germany, an episode that became a much-publicized scandal in New York in November 1917.

After suffering a nervous breakdown and the beginning of a long-term dependence on drugs, Wright retreated to California, where he attempted to make a living as a newspaper columnist in San Francisco.

By 1923, he was seriously ill, the result of a breakdown from overwork, he claimed, but in reality the consequence of his secret cocaine addiction, according to John Loughery's biography Alias S.S. Van Dine.

[citation needed] Confined to bed for a prolonged period of recovery, he began in frustration and boredom reading hundreds of volumes of crime and detection.

As a direct result of this exhaustive study, he wrote a seminal essay, published in 1926, which explored the history, traditions and conventions of detective fiction as an art form.

[9] Wright also decided to try his own hand at detective fiction and approached Maxwell Perkins, the famous Scribner's editor whom he had known at Harvard, with an outline for a trilogy that would feature an affluent, snobbish amateur sleuth, a Jazz Age Manhattan setting, and lively topical references.

The first few books about the distinctive Philo Vance (who shared with his creator a love of art and a disdain for the common touch) sold many copies, leading Wright to become wealthy for the first time in his life.

However, according to critic Julian Symons:[12] [Van Dine's] fate is curiously foreshadowed in that of Stanford West, the hero of his only [non-crime] novel, who sells out by abandoning the unpopular work in which he searched for "a sound foundation of culture and aristocracy" and becoming a successful novelist.

[citation needed] All but two of his novels were adapted as feature-length films, and the role of Philo Vance was played by stars such as William Powell (before his Nick Charles period), Basil Rathbone, and Edmund Lowe.

[17] On April 11, 1939, at age 50, Wright died in New York of a heart condition exacerbated by excessive drinking, a year after the publication of an unpopular experimental novel incorporating one of the biggest stars in radio comedy, The Gracie Allen Murder Case.