Hopper, James, b. 1876

Biography

Among the authors who came to Carmel in 1906 and helped create its fame as a literary and artistic colony was James M. Hopper, the popular writer more commonly known as Jimmy Hopper. Like many of the other Carmel pioneers, he was a friend of George Sterling, Upton Sinclair, and Sinclair Lewis, and like them, too, he was a Californian only by adoption. He was born in Paris, July 23, 1876, and was brought to America at the age of ten. After attending public schools in Oakland, he went to the University of California, winning fame as quarterback on the football team and as one of the trio that reputedly first stole the Stanford Axe in 1898. After graduation he studied law at Hastings College of Law and was admitted to the California bar. But, instead of practising law, he took a job as reporter on the San Francisco Chronicle. This journalistic experience was followed by a two-year period of teaching in the Philippine Islands, where he gathered material for his first book, Caybigan (1906), a collection of' short stories. Upon his return to the United States, Hopper seriously embarked on a writing career, which he pursued successfully, with several novels, more than 400 stories published in leading popular magazines like Collier's and the Saturday Evening Post, and nonfiction, including his syndicated articles as a foreign correspondent at the front during the first World War. Hopper lived abroad and in the East for many years, but he returned to Carmel eventually, and it was there he died in 1956.

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