Luis Lamour: bibliography and photos

American writer Luis Darborn Lamour critics call "the legend of the western". After all, the works written by the author in this genre gained worldwide fame and sold more than 250 million copies. For his contribution to the national culture, he was awarded the US President with the Gold Medal of Congress and the Medal of Freedom. Lamur was very fond of the west of America with its amazing history and nature. He traveled a lot, collecting stories and legends about courageous and brave people.

His characters are often quick-tempered and quick to kill, but at the same time they love and uphold justice. The Westerns of Luis Lamoure are full of adventures, dangers and cruel risks. The main characters of his works, as a rule, are ordinary people: cowboys, gold miners, miners, boxers, sailors, military, participants of the Civil War of 1861-1865, who fought on the side of the northerners against slavery. They are all different, but there is something that unites them, nobility and love of freedom.

about the author

Many fans and critics noted that Louis Lamour is very similar to the heroes of his works. A tall, strong-built man with a manly, weather-beaten face, and hardened, sinewy hands, like a pastoralist or a miner. It was not a coincidence, because in the young years to earn a piece of bread, the writer had a lot and hard work in various professions. Wandering in search of earnings in the country and abroad, Lamur himself often got into trouble, listened to the stories of his comrades and met interesting people. This experience in the future was very useful to the prolific writer, from whose pen 86 novels, 15 collections of short stories and novels and 400 stories published in many magazines around the world were published.

Youth

The writer was born on March 22, 1908 in the city of Jamestown (USA) in a large family of Louis Charles Lamour and Emily Darborn Lamur. His father was a veterinarian and instilled in his son a love for animals, and also taught to box well enough, since he himself was a fan of this single combat. Subsequently, boxing more than once useful to the future author of bestsellers as a means of protection and earnings in commercial duels. His mother Luis Lamour was grateful that she instilled in him a love of literature, their home library numbered about 300 books. In addition, members of the Darborn Lamour family were regular visitors to the city library. So, according to the writer himself, he went to school with a decent baggage of knowledge on history and literature.

Louis was already the seventh child in the family, so helping parents to make ends meet began with adolescence. He worked part-time where he could, and at the age of fifteen he fled the house and joined a circus troupe, where he took care of food and cleaned up elephants. Thus began the adventures of Louis Lamoure: he happened to work as a driver of livestock, an auxiliary worker at a ranch, a gold digger, a miner, a logger, a loader, a gravedigger and a merchant marine sailor. In the family he returned after many years, a mature man on the eve of World War II. By that time, relatives already lived in Oklahoma City.

Early Creativity

Despite his adventurous life, Luis Lamour did not forget about his long-standing love of literature. In the late 30's in the small newspaper of the state of Oklahoma , his first poems were published, which later, at the expense of the author, were published under the title "Smoke from this altar." The period from 1935 to 1938 was marked by the publication of stories that later appeared in the collections "Nights over the Solomon Islands" and "West of Singapore." In 1940, after numerous refusals, New Western Magazine published the first western of the writer, "A City That Can not Be Broke." The outbreak of World War II caused the novice writer to change his plans for life.

Military years

In 1942, Louis Lamour enlisted in the US Army. After the transfer across the ocean, as part of the Patton army, he participated in the fighting during the march to Paris. The Rhine passed already with the Ninth Army, there is information that Lamur also took part in the landing of the Allies in Normandy. Co-workers were very fond of listening to Louis's stories about the Wild West and about his own adventures, the most interesting versions were recorded. So, contrary to military actions, Lamur's stories continued to be published in various magazines. Rising to the rank of first lieutenant, in 1946 he was demobilized and returned to New York.

Creative career

In New York, Lamour, under the pseudonyms Tex Burns and Jim Mayo, wrote Western-style stories for the magazine "Breathtaking Adventures." The stories became popular and brought a good income, but the writer wanted more. Therefore, in the same 1946, he moved to Los Angeles, where the literary work began, which made Lamura famous throughout the world.

Using pseudonyms, he writes detective stories and adventure stories, many of which were later included in the collection "Hills of Murders." A series of books "Hopalong Kessedi and Dashing People of the Western Roads", created between 1950 and 1954, was published under the pseudonym Tex Burns, and the novels "Yellow Bat" and "Utah Blaine" were published under the pseudonym Jim Mayo. After moving to Los Angeles, Louis Lamour works very hard. The books of the author are becoming more popular, and in the year he publishes three new works.

Under his own name, the novel "The flow to the West" the author published in 1951, and in 1953 the light saw one of Lamur's best novels, Hondo, which was screened twice. The first time in 1953 with John Wayne in the title role and the second time in 1965, becoming a kind of TV version of the first. In general, according to the writer's works, more than 30 films were shot, but the most successful ones were Luis Lamour films "Hondo", "Devils in pink tights" and a television series about the clan of Sacketts. In 1960, the novel "Flint" was published, which was included in the list of the "25 best Westerns of all time" award.

The book "Down the slopes of the hills", published in 1968, was awarded the Golden Spur award. The novel "Bendigo Shafter", published in 1978, was a real sensation in the literary world and was named the best in the genre of western.

Luis Lamour: works and favorite characters

Since the author believed in family values, the strength of kinship and real friendship, a literary saga consisting of 17 novels, he devoted the Sackett clan. The first novel tells of Jubal Sackett, who arrived in America with the first settlers, and the subsequent novel about his descendants.

They were never rich, they lived hard, protecting themselves and their lands from various kinds of cattle-slaughterers and invaders of already settled lands, who tried to destroy the owners and take possession of everything that they had. The main characters waged endless wars with tribes of ferocious Indians and bands of bandits, which were even worse. When Tell Sockett - one of the descendants of Jubal - was in great trouble, all of the people who were from the Sacketts came to the rescue from different parts of America, close and friendly with them.

The master of the saloon, where a noisy crowd came to celebrate the victory and triumph of justice, all his life later told me that no one in the Wild West saw so many Sacketts gathered in one place. And one of the friends who helped Tellu said: "Let the enemies cut themselves in the nose, that it is worth catching one of Sockett, how the army, consisting of the Sacketts, clans and friends, will come to the rescue, and the offenders are provided with a place on But Hill cemetery)".

Like his favorite heroes, Lamur loved family and friends. Close relatives answered him the same, therefore, when the writer died on June 10, 1988, the family was not in a hurry to report this news to the press, so as not to interfere with those who loved it, to say good-bye to an expensive person. The author himself, shortly before his death, despite the illness, continued to work and said that he would live forever in his works, because he invested all the love and soul in them without a trace.