Biography

Philip Duffield Stong was born in 1899 near Keosauqua, Iowa, where his father ran a general store. His father was Benjamin J. Stong and his mother was Ada Evesta Duffield Stong. He attended Drake University graduating in 1919. After teaching in Minnesota, he moved to New York to take courses at Columbia, then went to teach English in Kansas. While teaching he took correspondence course from the University of Kansas. In 1924 he moved back to Des Moines to teach at Drake. He held a variety of jobs in journalism while trying to become a creative writer. He wrote for most of the leading magazines, but his most famous novel was State Fair, published in 1932, and adapted by Rogers and Hammerstein for their musical of the same name. He went on to write some forty books, children's books, and screenplays. On November 8, 1925 he married Virginia Maude Swain, a newspaper reporter. He died at his home in Connecticut in 1957.

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