Charles R. Jackson
| Charles R. Jackson | |
|---|---|
| Born | Charles Reginald Jackson April 6, 1903 Summit, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | September 21, 1968 (aged 65) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist, radio and television writer |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Newark High School, New York |
| Genre | Fictional prose |
| Notable works | The Lost Weekend |
| Spouse | Rhoda Copland Booth (m. 1938–68) |
| Children | 2 |
Charles Reginald Jackson (April 6, 1903 – September 21, 1968) was an American author, widely known for his 1944 novel The Lost Weekend.
Charles R. Jackson was born in Summit, New Jersey on April 6, 1903, the son of Frederick George and Sarah Williams Jackson. His family moved to Newark, New York in 1907, and nine years later his older sister, Thelma, and younger brother, Richard, were killed while riding in a car that was struck by an express train. He graduated from Newark High School in 1921. He attended Syracuse University, joining a fraternity there, but left during his freshman year after a "furtive sexual encounter with a fellow member of his fraternity, who then spread word of the incident in such a way that only Jackson came in for public disgrace"; a fictionalized version of that experience was later incorporated into The Lost Weekend.
As a young man he worked as an editor for local newspapers and in various bookstores in Chicago and New York prior to falling ill with tuberculosis. From 1927 to 1931, Jackson was confined to sanatoriums and eventually recovered in Davos, Switzerland. His battle with tuberculosis cost him a lung and served as a catalyst for his alcoholism.
He returned to New York at the height of the Great Depression and his difficulty in finding work spurred on his binge drinking. His battle to stop drinking started in late 1936 and was largely won by 1938. On March 4, 1938, Jackson married magazine writer Rhoda Booth. They later had two daughters, Sarah (born 1940) and Kate (born 1943).
During this time he was a free-lance writer and wrote radio scripts. Jackson's first published story, "Palm Sunday", appeared in the Partisan Review in 1939. It focused on the debauched organist of a church the narrators attended as children.
In the 1940s, Jackson wrote a trio of novels, beginning with The Lost Weekend published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1944. The autobiographical novel chronicled a struggling writer's five-day drinking binge. It earned Jackson lasting recognition. While working on The Lost Weekend, Jackson earned as much as $1000 per week writing scripts for the radio soap opera Sweet River, about a widowed minister and his two sons.
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