Dashiell Hammett Biography Quotes 19 Report mistakes

Early Life
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born on May 27, 1894, in St. Marys County, Maryland, and grew up largely in Baltimore and Philadelphia. He left school in his early teens and took a succession of jobs that exposed him to the rough edges of American urban life. Those early years shaped his ear for street talk, his eye for telling detail, and the skepticism about power and sentimentality that would later define his fiction.

Pinkerton and the Making of a Detective Writer
In 1915 Hammett joined the Pinkerton National Detective Agency and worked as an operative in several cities. The job taught him how investigations actually unfolded: the patient surveillance, the informers, the sudden violence, and the moral gray zones of private justice. When he enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War I, he was assigned to the Motor Ambulance Corps. He contracted influenza and tuberculosis, illnesses that left him with chronic health problems and long hospital stays. In 1921 he married Josephine Dolan, a nurse he met during his convalescence. They had two daughters, Mary Jane and Josephine, but the marriage grew strained and they eventually lived apart as his health, work, and restless temperament pulled him elsewhere.

From Pulp Pages to a New American Style
After the war Hammett settled for a time in San Francisco, worked as an advertising copywriter, and began to publish stories in the pulp magazine Black Mask. Under editor Joseph T. Shaw, he honed a style that dispensed with ornament and sentiment in favor of clear, hard surfaces and moral ambiguity. He created the nameless Continental Op, a working detective whose wry, unsparing voice helped establish the hard-boiled idiom. These stories brought him to the attention of major publishers, and Alfred A. Knopf soon issued his first novels. In 1929 he published Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, followed by The Maltese Falcon (1930), The Glass Key (1931), and The Thin Man (1934). With Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and the urbane duo Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man, Hammett refashioned the American detective as both a social observer and an embodiment of style.

Colleagues, Influence, and the Culture of Noir
Hammett's prose and moral clarity influenced a generation of writers, including Raymond Chandler, who admired his economy and authenticity. Hollywood embraced Hammett's characters and plots. John Huston's 1941 film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet, helped define film noir. The Thin Man became a successful film series headlined by William Powell and Myrna Loy, popularizing the witty, cocktail-dry banter of Nick and Nora. Hammett himself worked intermittently in Hollywood as a screenwriter and story contributor, though his heart remained with the disciplined craft of lean prose.

Personal Ties and Partnership with Lillian Hellman
In the early 1930s Hammett began a lifelong relationship with the playwright Lillian Hellman. Their partnership, by turns stormy and devoted, endured separations, different careers, and the political pressures of their era. Hellman championed his work, cared for him during bouts of illness, and later preserved and interpreted his legacy. Hammett also maintained ties with his daughters, even as his health and itinerant habits made his domestic life unstable.

Politics, War, and the Blacklist
Hammett's experience with private power and his wartime service informed a politics that leaned to the left. In the 1930s and 1940s he associated with anti-fascist and civil liberties causes and lent his name and energy to organizations seeking social reform. During World War II, despite his age and recurrent tuberculosis, he reentered the Army and served in the Aleutian Islands, where he edited an Army newspaper and contributed to morale and information efforts. After the war, as Cold War tensions rose, his political commitments brought scrutiny. He served as a trustee of a bail fund for the Civil Rights Congress; when called before federal authorities in 1951, he refused to disclose donors and was jailed for contempt. Blacklisted and with his income restricted, he struggled financially, and his books were, for a time, harder to find in print. Through this period, Hellman remained a central presence, offering practical and moral support.

Later Years
Hammett's health worsened in the 1950s with emphysema and the lingering effects of tuberculosis. He lived quietly, dividing his time between New York and retreats with friends, including stays with Hellman. Although he wrote little new fiction after The Thin Man, he revised, introduced, and supported reissues of his earlier work when he could, and he remained a touchstone for younger writers who saw in his novels a model of compression and integrity.

Death and Legacy
Dashiell Hammett died on January 10, 1961, in New York City. A veteran of two wars, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His influence on American literature and popular culture is profound: he proved that crime fiction could be unsentimental and still humane, that its dialogue could be as precise as poetry, and that a detective story could illuminate the workings of power and conscience. The characters he created, the cadence of his sentences, and the ethical climate of his plots continue to shape writers, filmmakers, and readers worldwide. Through the editors who backed him, like Joseph T. Shaw, the publishers who believed in him, such as Alfred A. Knopf, the collaborators and interpreters who adapted him, including John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, William Powell, and Myrna Loy, and the companions who sustained him, foremost Lillian Hellman and his family, Hammett helped invent a modern American voice whose sharp clarity still cuts.

Our collection contains 19 quotes who is written by Dashiell, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Justice - Love - Writing - Mother.

Other people realated to Dashiell: Diane Johnson (Novelist), Robert B. Parker (Writer), James Ellroy (Writer), Walter Mosley (Novelist)

• 1934 The Thin Man (Novel)
• 1933 Woman in the Dark (Novella)
• 1931 The Glass Key (Novel)
• 1930 The Maltese Falcon (Novel)
• 1929 The Dain Curse (Novel)
• 1929 Red Harvest (Novel)