Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, his witty live-in assistant, were Rex Stout's best-known characters. Nero, a middle-aged war veteran, rarely left his luxurious New York City brownstone house, relying on Archie for investigative work and personal assessments on characters involved in their cases. The book series featuring the two characters lasted from 1934 to 1975.
Rex Stout was born in 1886 in Noblesville, Indiana, to a Quaker family. He was primarily raised in Kansas, where his family moved during his childhood. Stout's parents encouraged his love of reading, and he reportedly had considerable reading skills before entering grade school. He won a state spelling bee championship in 1899.
Stout received his secondary education at Topeka High School and his college education at the University of Kansas. He joined the United States Navy in 1906 and served as a yeoman on the presidential yacht of President Theodore Roosevelt. Stout left the Navy in 1908 and drifted from job to job before publishing his first poem in 1910.
Between 1912 and 1918, Stout published around 40 short stories and novellas in various magazines, including adventure fiction, detective fiction, fantasy, romance, and science fiction. He also invented a new school banking system, which earned him a small fortune and allowed him to travel extensively.
Stout co-founded the publishing house Vanguard Press in 1926 and served as its president from 1926 to 1928. He later became a successful writer, publishing novels such as "How Like a God" (1929) and "The President Vanishes" (1934). He introduced his popular characters Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin in the hit novel "Fer-de-Lance" (1934).
Stout continued to write Nero Wolfe novels until his death in 1975. His final Nero Wolfe novel, "A Family Affair" (1975),revealed Nero's discovery of the shady activities of one of his closest associates. Stout's work has remained popular and influential among writers, and he was nominated for the writer of the century award in 2000. He was inducted posthumously into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame in 2014.
