Ring Lardner

Born in Niles, Michigan, in 1885, Ring Lardner began his career in newspapers and became a prominent sports columnist before moving into fiction. He wrote about baseball, marriage, and modern American life with a remarkable ear for slang and conversation, and readers as well as fellow writers admired how natural and precise his dialogue sounded.

Lardner is especially remembered for stories such as You Know Me Al, Haircut, and Alibi Ike, along with songs, plays, and magazine pieces that helped define American humor in the early 20th century. His work could be comic, but it was rarely soft; again and again, he used wit to expose vanity, self-deception, and the little absurdities of ordinary life.

He died in 1933 at the age of 48, but his influence lasted well beyond his lifetime. Later writers, including Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, are often noted for admiring his work, and his best stories still feel fresh because of their voice, timing, and clear-eyed view of human nature.