Joseph Hamilton Basso (September 5, 1904 – May 13, 1964) was an American novelist and journalist. Born in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

, Basso worked as reporter for several newspapers in New Orleans, wrote 11 novels, primarily about the

South South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...

, and was an associate editor at ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' for more than 20 years. His best-known work was the novel ''

The View from Pompey's Head ''The View from Pompey's Head'' is a novel by American writer Hamilton Basso, first published by Doubleday in 1954. It spent 40 weeks on ''The New York Times'' bestseller list. The title refers to the book's setting, the fictional small town ...

'', a story of a

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

attorney who returns to his Southern hometown in the early 1950s to investigate a mystery surrounding a famous writer. The book spent almost a year on the bestseller lists in 1954 and later was adapted into a motion picture.

Awards

His 1959 novel ''The Light Infantry Ball'' was a finalist for the 1960

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

. It was a kind of

prequel A prequel is a literary, dramatic or cinematic work whose story precedes that of a previous work, by focusing on events that occur before the original narrative. A prequel is a work that forms part of a backstory to the preceding work. The term " ...

to ''The View from Pompey's Head'', set in the same town, Pompey's Head, South Carolina, during the Civil War era. Basso died in 1964, at age 59, in

Weston, Connecticut Weston is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 10,354 at the 2020 census with the highest median household income in Connecticut. The town is served by Route 57 and Route 53, both of which run through the ...

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Bibliography

Novels

* '' Relics and Angels'' (1929) * ''Cinnamon Seed'' (1934) * ''In Their Own Image'' (1935) * ''Courthouse Square'' (1936) * ''Days Before Lent'' (1939) * ''Wine of the Country'' (1941) * ''Sun in Capricorn'' (1942) * ''The Greenroom'' (1949) * ''

'' (1954) * ''The Light Infantry Ball'' (1959) * ''A Touch of the Dragon'' (1964)

Nonfiction

* ''Beauregard: The Great Creole'' (biography) (1933) * ''Mainstream'' (biographical sketches) (1943) * ''The World from Jackson Square: A New Orleans Reader'' (Introduction; edited by Etolia S. Basso) (1948) * ''A Quota of Seaweed: Persons and Places in Brazil, Spain, Honduras, Jamaica, Tahiti, and Samoa'' (travel sketches) (1960)

References

External links