Authors > Erle Stanley Gardner

U.S. Mystery writer most famous for his character Perry Mason and the 82 novels which featured this hard hitting defense lawyer.

A lawyer by training, Mr. Gardner is one of the most successful authors of all time with over 300,000,000 copies sold and counting. With a huge body of literary work, he also had many other interests including work for radio, television, the establishing and running of the legal entity Court of Last Resort, plus an active lifestyle and many hobbies.

In addition to the Perry Mason novels, Mr. Gardner had written 24 mysteries under the pseudonym of A.A. Fair featuring Bertha Cool and Donald Lam; 9 mysteries featuring Doug Selby; 7 non-series mysteries; four collections of novellettes and short stories; 13 non-fiction accounts of exploring Baja California, the American desert and the Sacramento delta; 2 non-fiction books on crime; and countless short stories for the pulps and slicks.

During the pulp era, his series characters included Speed Dash, Senor Arnas deLobo, Jax Bowman, Sidney Zoom and his police dog, Ed Jenkins (the phantom crook), Whispering Sand, Major Brand (free lance Secret Service), El Paisano, Bob Larker, Black Barr, Bob Crowder, Dane Skarle, Sheriff Bill Landon, and Lester Leith. His first story published was "Nellies Naughtty Nightie" published in 1921 for the spicy pulp Breezy Stories. At his peak of writing production, it is claimed that he was producing more than one million words per year with stories appearing in the pulps every week.

From his paperback era, his series characters included Doug Selby, Terry Clane, Gramps Wiggins, Bertha Cool, Donald Lam, and Perry Mason.

He has had used a number of pen names including: A.A. Fair, Charles M Green, Kyle Corning, Grant Holliday, Robert Parr, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J. Kenny, Arthur Mann Sellers, Less Tillray, Dane Rigley, and Charles M. Stanton.