The Case of the Duplicate Daughter: A Perry Mason novel

About Erle Stanley GardnerJon Alexander

Born in Malden Massachusetts Erle Stanley Gardner left school in 1909 and attended Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana for just one month before he was suspended for focusing more on his hobby of boxing than his academic studies. Soon after he settled in California where he taught himself the law and passed the state bar exam in 1911. The practise of law never held much interest for him however apart from as it pertained to trial strategy and in his spare time he began to write for the pulp magazines that gave Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler their start. Not long after the publication of his first novel The Case of the Velvet Claws featuring Perry Mason he gave up his legal practice to write full time. He had one daughter Grace with his first wife Natalie from whom he later separated. In 1968 Gardner married his long-term secretary Agnes Jean Bethell whom he professed to be the real 'Della Street' Perry Mason's sole (although unacknowledged) love interest. He was one of the most successful authors of all time and at the time of his death in Temecula California in 1970 is said to have had 135 million copies of his books in print in America alone.