Lawyers as Authors

Ok, let us think of the authors that we have heard of, who were also lawyers. Does any name strike our mind? Or do we really draw a blank?

The first and foremost in our times is John Grisham. He was an attorney in Mississippi. One of the earliest works of legal and logical reasoning in the words of the author himself is The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe. I learned that Abraham Lincoln was an admirer of Edgar Allen Poe and that Lincoln even wrote a story called The Trailor Murder Mystery for the Quincy, Illinois Whig on April 15, 1846. The details of this story can be found at The Nostalgia League and in an article, The Brief History of the Legal Thriller.

Then there was Wilkie Collins who was a very famous author and he was probably more famous and generated more excitement than Grisham does in our times. You can read about it on this web link. And for some more information, we have the Tarlton Law Library at Texas.