Rex Stout Biography Quotes 17 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Rex Todhunter Stout was born on December 1, 1886, in Noblesville, Indiana, into a large Midwestern family headed by John Wallace Stout and Lucetta Todhunter Stout. His parents were educators with a strong moral and literary bent, and the household encouraged reading, debate, and self-discipline. When he was a child the family moved to Kansas, where he grew up in a rigorously principled environment that prized learning and plain speech. Bright, restless, and bookish, he read widely and wrote early, and after local schooling he attended the University of Kansas for a time before leaving to work and to see more of the world on his own terms.

Apprenticeships, Navy Service, and Early Writing
As a young man, Stout tried on a variety of occupations. Notably, he served in the U.S. Navy as a yeoman on the presidential yacht USS Mayflower in the first decade of the twentieth century, an experience that sharpened his administrative skills and his understanding of hierarchy and procedure. After leaving the Navy, he supported himself with clerical and bookkeeping jobs while selling short fiction to popular magazines. In the 1910s and 1920s he wrote adventure and genre stories with growing technical assurance. He also devised a school banking system that was adopted by hundreds of schools across the United States, bringing him financial independence. That security allowed him to turn to more ambitious literary projects, including the psychological novel How Like a God (1929) and several other serious works that won him notice for stylistic control and characterization.

Foundations in Publishing and Advocacy
Stout's success in business and writing drew him toward publishing reform and progressive cultural efforts. He was among those who helped launch Vanguard Press in the 1920s, an imprint established to nurture books of social and intellectual significance. Through these efforts he met editors, agents, and activists who would remain part of his professional circle. His longtime literary agent, Harold Ober, became a crucial ally in placing his work and protecting his interests, an association that would serve Stout well when he shifted decisively to detective fiction.

The Creation of Nero Wolfe
In 1934 Stout introduced Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin in the novel Fer-de-Lance, beginning one of the most durable partnerships in American crime fiction. Wolfe, the corpulent, sedentary genius with ironclad routines, and Archie, his quick-witted, street-smart legman, emerged as a perfect double act whose repartee, moral code, and teamwork carried dozens of novels and novellas. Over subsequent books Stout enriched the world around them with memorable figures such as Inspector Cramer, Fritz Brenner, and Saul Panzer. He published the Wolfe stories with major New York houses, first with Farrar & Rinehart and later with Viking Press, honing a narrative method that combined fair-play plotting, social observation, and dialogue-driven momentum. He also experimented with other sleuths, including the independent investigator Dol Bonner, displaying an interest in character types outside the usual genre archetypes.

War Work and Public Stances
During World War II, Stout set aside much of his fiction to devote himself to the national effort. He chaired the Writers' War Board, coordinating authors' contributions to home-front publications and messaging, and he hosted the CBS radio program Our Secret Weapon, a weekly broadcast that analyzed and exposed Axis propaganda. He worked in tandem with public information figures such as Elmer Davis and maintained a clear anti-fascist stance. After the war he remained outspoken on civil liberties and public policy. He sharply criticized political extremism and government overreach, and his 1965 Nero Wolfe novel The Doorbell Rang boldly targeted abuses associated with J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. That book, and Stout's public comments, placed him at odds with powerful institutions but earned admiration from writers and readers who valued his independence.

Later Career and Recognition
The postwar decades were exceptionally productive. Stout refined the Wolfe-and-Archie formula without allowing it to ossify, using the series to comment on business practices, politics, race, and media. Critics including Anthony Boucher praised the prose and the structural elegance of the cases, and the books enjoyed robust sales and frequent reprints. Stout served the writing community as a leader and negotiator, including a term as president of the Authors Guild in the early 1950s, where he advocated for authors' rights, fair contracts, and freedom of expression. In 1959 the Mystery Writers of America recognized his mastery with its Grand Master Award, the organization's highest honor. He continued to publish well into his eighties; A Family Affair (1975), a late and somber Wolfe novel, showed that his command of tone and character had not diminished.

Personal Life
Stout married twice. His first marriage, to Fay Kennedy in 1916, ended in divorce. In 1932 he married Pola Stout, a noted textile designer whose career in modernist, American-made fabrics paralleled his own professional ascent. Their partnership was close and sustaining; at their country home, High Meadow, in rural New York, Pola's design work and Rex's writing unfolded side by side. They raised two daughters, Barbara and Rebecca, and their household, while private, welcomed editors, fellow writers, and friends from the arts. Those closest to him frequently observed that he combined a disciplined, almost craftsmanlike approach to work with convivial wit and exacting standards in conversation and debate.

Death and Legacy
Rex Stout died on October 27, 1975, at age eighty-eight. He left behind Pola, their daughters, and a body of work that helped define the American detective novel. His fiction's enduring appeal lies in the balance he struck between game-like plotting and the lived-in texture of character: the rituals of Wolfe's brownstone, Archie's voice, the recurring cast that made each return feel both fresh and familiar. Beyond the page, he exerted influence through public service and professional leadership, insisting that writers should shape the civic life of their time. After his death, his life and methods were documented in detail by biographer John McAleer, whose study benefited from the cooperation of Stout's family and colleagues. Generations of readers and crime writers have traced their own standards for dialogue, structure, and voice to the Wolfe canon, a testament to the clarity of purpose and craft Rex Stout brought to modern mystery fiction.

Our collection contains 17 quotes who is written by Rex, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Ethics & Morality - Writing - Sports - Book.