Thomas Beer

Born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1889, Thomas Beer was an American author and biographer who studied at Yale, graduating in 1911, and later studied law at Columbia. Although he trained for law, he became known for literary and historical writing instead.

He is especially remembered for biographies of Stephen Crane and Marcus Hanna, along with The Mauve Decade (1926), a lively study of American manners in the 1890s. His books were noted for their wit and strong sense of period detail, helping modern readers picture an earlier American world.

Beer died in 1940. Even though he is not widely read today, his work remains part of the tradition of stylish American literary biography and cultural commentary.