Irving Stone

Irving Stone (born Tennenbaum, July 14, 1903, San Francisco, California – August 26, 1989, Los Angeles) was an American writer, chiefly known for his biographical novels of noted artists, politicians and intellectuals; among the best known are Lust for Life (1934), about the life of Vincent van Gogh, and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961), about Michelangelo.

Born Irving Tennenbaum, he was seven when his parents divorced. By the time he was a senior in high school, his mother had remarried. He legally changed his last name to "Stone", his stepfather's surname. Stone said his mother instilled a passion for reading in him. From then on, he believed that education was the only way to succeed in life.

In 1923, Stone received his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley. After receiving his M.A. there, he worked as a Teaching Assistant in English. He met his first wife, Lona Mosk (1905–1965), who was a student at the university. On money provided by her father, Los Angeles businessman, Ernest Mosk, the young couple went to Paris.

Irving and Lona returned to the United States in the 1930s from Europe, where he had been researching Van Gogh for six months. In 1931 they resided in New York's Greenwich Village where he finished Lust for Life, the biographical novel about Van Gogh that set his career in motion, according to the NY Times obituary of August 28, 1989. According to the Times, Lust for Life (the title suggested by his first wife) was rejected by seventeen publishers over three years before being published in 1934.

Stone's first marriage ended in New York. As Lona Mosk later told her son, James Earnest Packer, "I got bored having to sit around all day telling Irving how wonderful he was!"

Stone took up with his secretary Jean. After he was divorced from Lona, he and Jean married. This later marriage lasted until Stone's death in 1989. Jean Stone died in 2004 aged 93.

During their years together, Jean Stone edited many of his works. The Stones lived primarily in Los Angeles, California. They funded a foundation to support charitable causes they believed in.

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