Editing Rex Stout (section)

==Biography==
===Early life===
Stout was born in [[Noblesville, Indiana]], in 1886, but shortly afterwards his [[Quaker]] parents John Wallace Stout and Lucetta Elizabeth Todhunter Stout moved their family (nine children in all) to [[Kansas]].

His father was a teacher who encouraged his son to read, leading to Rex having read the entire Bible twice by the age of four. At age thirteen he was the state [[spelling bee]] champion. Stout attended [[Topeka High School|Topeka High School, Kansas]], and the [[University of Kansas|University of Kansas, Lawrence]]. His sister, [[Ruth Stout]], also authored several books on no-work gardening and some social commentaries.

He served in the [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]] from 1906 to 1908 (including service as a [[yeoman]] on [[Theodore Roosevelt]]'s presidential yacht) and then spent about the next four years working at a series of jobs in six states, including cigar-store clerk.

In 1910–11, Stout sold three short poems to the literary magazine ''The Smart Set''. Between 1912 and 1918, he published more than forty works of fiction in various magazines, ranging from literary publications such as ''[[Smith's Magazine]]'' and ''[[Lippincott's Monthly Magazine]]'' to pulp magazines like the ''[[All-Story Weekly]].''

Stout invented a school banking system around 1916, which he promoted with his brother Robert. About 400 U.S. schools adopted his system for keeping track of the money that school children saved in accounts at school.  Royalties from this work provided Stout with enough money to travel in Europe extensively during the 1920s.

In 1916, Stout married Fay Kennedy of [[Topeka, Kansas]]. They divorced in February 1932<ref name="Townsend"/>{{Rp|xx|date=October 2013}} and, in December 1932, Stout married [[Pola Stout|Pola Weinbach Hoffmann]], a designer who had studied with [[Josef Hoffmann]] in [[Vienna]].<ref name="McAleer"/>{{Rp|234–236|date=October 2013}}{{efn|Born in Stryj, Poland, Pola Weinbach Hoffmann Stout (1902–1984) studied at the Vienna School of Design. She and her first husband, Wolfgang Hoffmann—son of the famous architect and [[Wiener Werkstätte]] co-founder [[Josef Hoffmann]]—were a prominent design team when they emigrated to the United States in 1925.<ref>{{cite journal |date=2001 |title=Shaping the Modern: American Decorative Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago, 1917–65 |journal=Modern Solutions |publisher=[[Art Institute of Chicago]] |volume=27 |issue=2 |page=52 |isbn=9780865591875 }}</ref>}}{{efn|Pola Stout was an influential textile designer after her second marriage.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Kirkham |editor-first=Pat |date=2000 |title=Women Designers in the USA, 1900–2000 |location=New Haven, Connecticut |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |page=151 |isbn=9780300093315 }}</ref>}}