Editing Frank Harris (section)

===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.