Ken Ward in the Jungle

Zane Grey, original name Pearl Grey, (born Jan. 31, 1872, Zanesville, Ohio, U.S.—died Oct. 23, 1939, Altadena, Calif.), prolific writer whose romantic novels of the American West largely created a new literary genre, the western.

Trained as a dentist, Grey practiced in New York City from 1898 to 1904, when he published privately a novel of pioneer life, Betty Zane, based on an ancestor’s journal. Deciding to abandon dentistry for full-time writing, he published in 1905 The Spirit of the Bord...