American novelist George Agnew Chamberlain was born in Brazil to American missionary parents from New Jersey. He was brought back to the US to be educated, attending the prestigious Lawrenceville Preparatory School and enrolling in world-famous "Ivy League" Princeton University, from which he graduated in 1901. In 1904 he was appointed by the US government to be deputy consul in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After he completed his posting there, he spent several years traveling around the world before finally coming back to the US and settling in Salem, NJ.

Not long after he returned he began writing professionally, including several articles and books on Mexico and South America, in which he held a particular interest. Several of his fictional works were made into films (Taxi (1919), White Man (1924)) and his stories and novels became quite popular, many of them set in his home area of rural New Jersey. Two of his most successful novels were turned into films in the 1940s: "The Phantom Filly" was filmed as Home in Indiana (1944) and the dark crime thriller "The Red House" was brought to the screen in 1947 as The Red House (1947).

He turned out more than 30 novels, but by the 1960s his writing career had begun to wane. "Home in Indiana" was remade into a Pat Boone film, April Love (1957) in 1957, but that was the last time Hollywood used one of his works. He died in New Jersey in 1966.

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George Agnew Chamberlain

Writer