Burnett, W.R.

The American novelist and screenwriter William Riley Burnett was born in Springfield, Ohio, in an influential family. He qualified with an exam from the Miami Military Institute in Ohio, but after one term of studying Journalism at Ohio State University, he abandoned his studies. He married young and worked for several years as a statistician in the Ohio state administration. In 1927, he moved to Chicago, had a variety of jobs including that of a hotel receptionist, and became acquainted with shady characters and environments which came to inspire his writing. And it was a writer that he wanted to become – he wrote energetically and is said to have had five novels and hundreds of short stories refused during these years.