Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) was born in Chicago and raised in England, where he was educated at Dulwich College. During the First World War he served in France with the Canadian army. In the 1920s he became a successful oil executive in Los Angeles, until the Depression and his drinking cost him the job in 1932. At forty-four he began writing for the pulp magazine Black Mask, and in 1939, at the age of fifty, he published his first novel, The Big Sleep, introducing the private detective Philip Marlowe.
Over the next two decades he wrote seven Marlowe novels, among them Farewell, My Lovely, The Lady in the Lake and The Long Goodbye, which won the Edgar Award in 1955. In Hollywood he co-wrote the screenplay of Double Indemnity with Billy Wilder, earning an Academy Award nomination. With his wry first-person voice, his unforgettable similes and his portrait of Los Angeles, Chandler turned the hardboiled detective story into literature. He died in La Jolla, California, in 1959.
