Dashiell Hammett: 1894-1961

Dashiell Hammett was born in St. Mary's County, Maryland, on May 27, 1894. The family moved to Philadelphia, and then to Baltimore. Hammett studied at the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute but left school at the age of 14 to help support the family.

During World War I Hammett was a sergeant in an ambulance corps.

Most of Hammett's income during 1922-1926 came from writing advertising copy for a San Francisco jewelry store. His first short story appeared in 1923.

Later Hammett introduced a short, overweight, unnamed detective employed by the San Francisco branch of the Continental Detective Agency, who became known as The Continental Op. His methods of detection are completely convincing, and his personality has more than one dimension.

However, in 1929 Hammett turned his attention to a new private eye, Sam Spade, who made his initial appearance in Black Mask in September 1929. In The Maltese Falcon Spade became the personification of the American private eye. The Maltese Falcon was filmed many times.

In the 1930s, Hammett became politically active. He joined the Communist Party and was a fierce opponent of Nazism. For his communist beliefs Hammett became a target during McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade. In 1951, he went to prison for five months. For a while the State Department kept his books away from the shelves of American libraries overseas.

For the rest of his life Hammett lived in and around New York. He died penniless of lung cancer on January 10, 1961.