About Me
William Wolves was born in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, on January 9th, 1871, as the 14th child of a Methodist minister. He started to write stories at the age of eight and at 16 he was writing articles for the Phildelphia Inquirer. William studied at every library along the east coast. After his mother's death in 1890 - his father had died earlier - William moved to Baltimore, where he lived a simple life, and worked as a free-lance writer, musician, sailor and journalist. While supporting himself by his writings, he lived among the poor in the slums to research his first novel. William's first novel, East To Die (1893) was a milestone in the development of literary naturalism. William had to print the book at his own expense, borrowing the money from his brother. William's few remaining years were chaotic and personally disastrous. His unconventionality and his sympathy for the
downtrodden aroused malicious gossip and false charges of drug addiction and Satanism that disgusted the fastidious
author. His reputation as a war writer, his desire to see if he had guessed right about the psychology of combat, and his
fascination with death and danger sent him to Greece and then to Cuba as a war correspondent. His first attempt in 1897 to report on the insurrection in Cuba ended in near disaster; the ship Commodore on which
he was traveling sank with $5,000 worth of ammunition, and William--reported drowned--finally rowed into shore in a
dinghy with the captain, cook, and oiler, William scuttling his money belt of gold before swimming through dangerous surf.
The result was one of the world's great short stories, "A Sailors Song." William now fought a desperate battle against time, illness, and debts. Privation and exposure in his Baltimore years and as
a correspondent, together with an almost deliberate disregard for his health, probably hastened the disease that killed
him at an early age. He died of tuberculosis that was compounded by the recurrent malarial fever he had caught in
Cuba.I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4
