Which American writer, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings or William H. Gass, was born first?
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (August 8, 1896 – December 14, 1953) was an American author who lived in rural Florida and wrote novels with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, "The Yearling", about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into a movie of the same name. The book was written long before the concept of young adult fiction, but is now commonly included in teen-reading lists.
Joseph Kirkland Joseph Kirkland (January 7, 1830 - April 29, 1894) was an American novelist. Born in Geneva, New York, to educator William Kirkland and author Caroline Kirkland, he was a businessman in Chicago, then served in the Union Army during the Civil War, reaching the rank of major. He resigned his Union Army commission and moved to Tilton, Illinois, where he married Theodosia B. Wilkinson in 1863. In 1864 he founded the Midwestern literary periodical "Prairie Chicken". After the war he became a lawyer while also pursuing writing. He is best remembered as the author of two realistic novels of pioneer life in the Far West, "Zury: The Meanest Man in Spring County (1887)" and "The McVeys". Other works are "The Captain of Company K" and "The Story of Chicago". He was also the literary editor of the "Chicago Tribune". Kirkland died in Chicago at the age of 64.