Famous Writers School
| Industry | Education |
|---|---|
| Genre | fiction, non-fiction, advertising, and business writing |
| Fate | bankruptcy (1972) |
| Founded | 1961 |
| Founder | Bennett Cerf, Gordon Carroll, and Albert Dorne |
| Headquarters | Westport, Connecticut |
|
Key people
|
Faith Baldwin, John Caples, Bruce Catton, Bennett Cerf, Mignon G. Eberhart, Paul Engle, Bergen Evans, Clifton Fadiman, Rudolf Flesch, Phyllis McGinley, J. D. Ratcliff, Rod Serling, Max Shulman, Red Smith, Mark Wiseman |
The Famous Writers School was an educational institution that ran a correspondence course for writers in the 1960s and 1970s. Founded in 1961 by Bennett Cerf, Gordon Carroll, and Albert Dorne, it became the subject of a scandal after a 1970 exposé by Jessica Mitford, who noted the school's questionable academic and business practices.
The school was founded by Bennett Cerf, a Random House editor and well-known television personality, Gordon Carroll, an occasional editor for Reader's Digest, and Albert Dorne, an illustrator whose previous school, the Famous Artists School, served as a model for the school. It began operations in 1961, based in Westport, Connecticut. The ubiquitous advertising copy for the school, which was often found in the back of magazines, listed the following writers (who were also stockholders) as the school's "Guiding Faculty": Faith Baldwin, John Caples, Bruce Catton, Bennett Cerf, Mignon G. Eberhart, Paul Engle, Bergen Evans, Clifton Fadiman, Rudolf Flesch, Phyllis McGinley, J. D. Ratcliff, Rod Serling, Max Shulman, Red Smith and Mark Wiseman. Cerf is quoted in the advertisements as saying: "We approached representative writers, the best we could get in each field: fiction, advertising, sports writing, television. The idea was to give the school some prestige."
...
Wikipedia