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J.D. Salinger Facts

J.D. Salinger Facts
J.D. Salinger, the acclaimed author most known for the 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, was born in January 1st, 1919 in New York City, New York. He was born Jerome David Salinger to Marie and Sol Salinger (kosher cheese salesman). Jerome attended public school until being enrolled in a private school in 1932. Jerome was later enrolled at Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania, where he became the literary editor of the yearbook. He graduated in 1936 then enrolled at New York University, where he stayed for one year. Jerome left to work in Austria, returning to the U.S. again only one month before Austria was invaded by the Nazis. He would be back to fight the Nazis on D-Day. After several years of publishing his short stories and other writing, The Catcher in the Rye would be published in 1951.
Interesting J.D. Salinger Facts:
J.D. Salinger had one sibling, an older sister Doris born in 1911.
J.D. Salinger was drafted into the Army in 1942. He met Ernest Hemingway while serving overseas in World War II.
J.D. Salinger was a counter-intelligence officer and one of the first officers to enter a concentration camp following liberation.
J.D. Salinger was hospitalized after the war, for what many believe to be a nervous breakdown. While in the hospital he met a German named Silvia whom he married. Their marriage ended in eight months.
J.D. Salinger married Claire Douglas in 1955, and had two children Matthew and Margaret.
The New Yorker turned down excerpts of The Catcher in the Rye because they felt that the main character Holden Caulfield was not believable.
13 of J.D. Salinger's short stories appeared in The New Yorker including Slight Rebellion Off Madison (1946), A Perfect Day for Bananafish (1948), Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut (1948), Just Before the War with the Eskimos (1948), The Laughing Man (1949), For Esme-With Love and Squalor (1950), Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes (1951), Teddy (1953), Franny (1955), Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (1955), Zooey (1957), Seymour: An Introduction (1959), and Hapworth 16, 1924 (1965).
In 1953, two years after The Catcher in the Rye was published, J.D. Salinger moved to a 90-acre property in Cornish, New Hampshire, where he began his life of seclusion.
Hapworth 16, 1924 was the last story J.D. Salinger would allow to be published while he was alive.
In 1966 J.D. Salinger's wife filed for divorce.
In the early 1970s J.D. Salinger lived with a college freshman Joyce Maynard for 10 months. She later wrote about her relationship with him.
J.D. Salinger stopped publishing his work but many believe that he continued to write constantly and that he may have left as many as 10 novels locked in his house when he died.
J.D. Salinger married a nurse named Colleen O'Neill. They married in 1998 and remained husband and wife until his death.
J.D. Salinger died on January 27th, 2010 at the age of 91 in Cornish, New Hampshire.
A biography recently published about J.D. Salinger suggests that several of his works are soon to be published.
The Catcher in the Rye sells approximately 250,000 copies per year. In total it has sold more than 65 million copies.


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