Writing and Preaching Career
In 1902, while pastoring the Christian Church in Pittsburg, Kansas, he wrote a melodramatic story, entitled That Printer of Udell's, which he intended to read to his congregation, one chapter per week, at successive Sunday night meetings. But before he read it to his congregation, the story was published in serial form in The Christian Century, his denomination's official journal. Wright despised the magazine version so much that he "hid the poor mutilated corpse in the bottom of the least used drawer of my desk and moved on to other things" (To My Sons, p. 213). But parishioners enjoyed the story so much that they encouraged him to publish it in book form, which he did. But it was Wright's second novel, The Shepherd of the Hills, published in 1907 and set in Branson, Missouri, that established him as a best-selling author. That book also attracted a growing stream of tourists to the little-known town of Branson, resulting in its becoming a major tourist destination.
In 1905 Wright accepted the position of pastor at the Christian Church in Lebanon, Missouri. Wright remained there until 1907 when he accepted another pastoral position in California. In that same year, after the success of The Shepherd of the Hills (his first book to sell one million copies), Wright resigned as pastor of the Redlands, California, Christian Church, moved to a ranch near El Centro, California, and devoted the rest of his life to writing popular stories. In 1911, he published his most popular book, The Winning of Barbara Worth, a historical novel set in the Imperial Valley of southeastern California.
Read more about this topic: Harold Bell Wright
Famous quotes containing the words writing, preaching and/or career:
“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man
that looks in my face?
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?
We understand men do we not?
What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach—what the preaching could
not accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not?”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)