Stout, Rex

The American author Rex Todhunter Stout was born in Noblesville, Indiana, as the sixth of nine children to John and Lucetta Todhunter Stout who were both Quakers. When he was only a few months old, the family moved to Topeka, Kansas. As a child, Stout was good at mathematics and languages and he was later admitted to the University of Kansas at Lawrence, but his family could not afford to pay for his education, so instead he enlisted in the navy and served two years on the presidential yacht, the USS Sylph. After he had left the navy in 1908, he worked as a freelance writer, tourist guide and travelling bookkeeper.