James Hilton(1900-1954)

British novelist James Hilton was born in Leigh, Lancashire, England, in 1900. His father was a schoolmaster. Hilton graduated from Cambridge University in 1921, having already written his first novel, "Catherine Herself" (written in 1918, it wasn't published until 1920). After graduation he wrote a twice-weekly column for "The Dublin Irish Independent", which he continued to do for several years. In 1931 he wrote the novel "And Now Good-Bye", which was quite successful and brought him, as he once said, "a good return". In 1933 he was approached by the editor of "The British Weekly" magazine and asked to write a short-story for the magazine's Christmas issue, for which he had a deadline of just two weeks. As the deadline approached he still hadn't a clue as to what kind of story to write, so one night he decided to take a bicycle ride to clear his head. When he came back he had the inspiration to write what eventually became the international best-seller "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (a story based on the career of his father). He finished the story in four days. His editor at the magazine was so impressed with it that he recommended the magazine's parent company, a major publishing house, publish the story in the American market, which was much more profitable than the British market. The company arranged for the story to be published in the American magazine "The Atlantic Monthly" in its April 1934 issue. It garnered such attention from both readers and reviewers--noted critic Alexander Woollcott effusively praised it in his "New Yorker" column and on his radio show--that just two months later it was published in book form and became a huge international hit, and was later made into a movie now regarded as one of the classics of modern cinema, Au revoir Mr. Chips! (1939).

Hilton turned out a string of highly regarded novels that were turned into highly regarded films--Le chevalier sans armure (1937), Horizons perdus (1937), Prisonniers du passé (1942)--and eventually moved to the US. He died in Long Beach, CA, in 1954 of liver cancer.