Editing Frank Harris (section)

==Biography==
===Early years===
Harris was born '''James Thomas Harris''' in 1855, in [[Galway]], Ireland, to Welsh parents. His father, Thomas Vernon Harris, was a naval officer from [[Fishguard]], Pembrokeshire, Wales.<ref>Ancestry.com – Passport Application Form and Welsh Censuses</ref> While living with his older brother he was, for a year or more, a pupil at [[The Royal School, Armagh]]. At the age of 12 he was sent to [[Wales]] to continue his education as a [[Boarding school|boarder]] at the [[Ruabon Grammar School]] in Denbighshire, a time he was to remember later in ''My Life and Loves''.  Harris was unhappy at the school and ran away within a year.

He emigrated to the United States in late 1869, arriving in New York City virtually penniless.<ref name=RevAve>"Frank Harris is Dead in France: Great Author Succumbs at 75; Had Just Completed a Biography of Shaw", ''The Revolutionary Age'' [New York], vol. 2, no. 40 (5 Sept.. 1931), pp. 1, 3.</ref> The 14-year-old took a series of odd jobs to support himself, working first as a [[shoeshiner|boot black]], a [[porter (carrier)|porter]], a general laborer, and a construction worker on the erection of the [[Brooklyn Bridge]].<ref name=RevAve /> Harris would later turn these early occupational experiences into art, incorporating tales from them into his book ''The Bomb.''<ref name=RevAve />

From New York Harris moved to the [[Midwestern United States|American Midwest]], settling in the country's second largest city, Chicago,<ref name=RevAve/> where he took a job as a hotel clerk and eventually a manager. Owing to Chicago's central place in the meat packing industry, Harris made the acquaintance of various cattlemen, who inspired him to leave the big city to take up work as a [[cowboy]].<ref name=RevAve/>  Eventually growing tired of life in the cattle industry, he enrolled at the [[University of Kansas]],<ref name=RevAve /> where he studied law and earned a degree, gaining admission to the Kansas state bar association.<ref name=RevAve/>

In 1878, in [[Brighton]], England, he married Florence Ruth Adams, who died the following year.{{citation needed|date=March 2017}}

===Return to Europe===
[[File:Frank Harris, Vanity Fair, 1913-11-12.jpg|left|thumb|Harris caricatured by OWL in ''[[Vanity Fair (British magazine)|Vanity Fair]]'', 1913]]
Harris was not cut out to be a lawyer and soon decided to turn his attention to literature. He moved to England in 1882, later traveling to various cities in Germany, [[Austria]], France, and [[Greece]] on his literary quest. He worked briefly as an American newspaper correspondent before settling down in England to seriously pursue the vocation of journalism.<ref name=RevAve/>

Harris first came to general notice as the editor of a series of London publications, including the ''[[Evening News (London)|Evening News]]'', the ''[[Fortnightly Review]]'' and the ''[[Saturday Review (London)|Saturday Review]]'', the last-named being the high point of his journalistic career, with [[H. G. Wells]] and [[George Bernard Shaw]] as regular contributors.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/tag/frank-harris-newspaper-editor/|title=Frank Harris newspaper editor {{!}} Jeanne Rathbone|access-date=6 June 2019}}</ref>

From 1908 to 1914 Harris concentrated on working as a novelist, authoring a series of popular books such as ''The Bomb,'' ''The Man Shakespeare,'' and ''The Yellow Ticket and Other Stories''.<ref name=RevAve/> With the advent of [[World War I]] in the summer of 1914, Harris decided to return to the United States.

From 1916 to 1922 he edited the U.S. edition of ''[[Pearson's Magazine]],'' a popular monthly which combined short story fiction with [[socialism|socialist]]-tinted features on contemporary news topics. One issue of the publication was banned from the mails by Postmaster General [[Albert S. Burleson]] during the period of American participation in the [[World War I|Great War]].<ref name=RevAve /> Despite this Harris managed to navigate the delicate situation which faced the left-wing press and to keep ''[[Pearson's Magazine]]'' functioning and solvent during the war years.

Harris became an American citizen in April 1921. In 1922 he travelled to Berlin to publish his best-known work, his autobiography ''My Life and Loves'' (published in four volumes, 1922–1927). It is notorious for its graphic descriptions of Harris' purported [[Human sexual activity|sexual encounters]] and for its exaggeration of the scope of his adventures and his role in history. Years later, ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine reflected in its 21 March 1960 issue "Had he not been a thundering liar, Frank Harris would have been a great autobiographer&nbsp;... he had the crippling disqualification that he told the truth, as [[Max Beerbohm]] remarked, only 'when his invention flagged'." A fifth volume, supposedly taken from his notes but of doubtful provenance, was published in 1954, long after his death.<ref name=Vol5>James Campbell, [https://books.google.com/books?id=zcp4GAk8SmIC&pg=PA146 ''Exiled in Paris Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett and Others on the Left Bank''], pp. 143–147 Books.google.com</ref>

Harris also wrote short stories and novels, two books on [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]], a series of biographical sketches in five volumes under the title ''Contemporary Portraits'' and biographies of his friends [[Oscar Wilde]] and [[George Bernard Shaw]]. His attempts at playwriting were less successful: only ''Mr. and Mrs. Daventry'' (1900) (which may have been based on an idea by [[Oscar Wilde]]<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Nathan |first=George Jean |date=May 1910 |title=The Morals of the Drama Ladies |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_smart-set_1910-05_31_1/page/146/mode/1up?view=theater |magazine=The Smart Set |location=p. 146 |access-date=20 June 2023}}</ref>) was produced on the stage.

===Death and legacy===
Married three times, Harris died at 9 Rue de la Buffa in [[Nice]] aged 75 on 26 August 1931, of a heart attack. He was subsequently buried at Cimetière Sainte-Marguerite, adjacent to the [[Russian Orthodox Cemetery, Nice|Cimetière Caucade]], in the same city.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=mBfPCQAAQBAJ&dq=frank+harris+Cimeti%C3%A8re+Caucade&pg=PA77 ''French Riviera and its Artists'']</ref>

Just after his death a biography written by [[Hugh Kingsmill]] (pseudonym of Hugh Kingsmill Lunn) was published.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kingsmill|first=Hugh|title=Frank Harris|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.77205|year=1932|publisher=Jonathan Cape|location=London|page=[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.77205/page/n280 254]}}</ref>