Grisham, John
Identification American novelist
Born February 8, 1955; Jonesboro, Arkansas
A master of the legal thriller, Grisham was the best-selling
novelist of the 1990’s.
John Grisham was an avid reader as a boy and discov-
ered John Steinbeck’s novels while attending high
school. Although he never planned to become a
writer, Grisham began keeping a journal while he
was an undergraduate at Mississippi State University.
He graduated with a degree in accounting in 1977
and earned a law degree from the University of Mis-
sissippi in 1981. He then practiced criminal and per-
sonal injury law in Southaven, Mississippi, a suburb
of Memphis, Tennessee, and was elected to the Mis-
sissippi House of Representatives in 1983. He served
in the state’s legislature until 1990.
Grisham’s first book,A Time to Kill, was turned
down by over twenty-five publishers until 1988, when
Wynwood Press paid him an advance of $15,000 and
brought it out with an initial print run of five thou-
sand copies. (Grisham bought one thousand copies
for himself.) The novel was inspired by the testi-
mony of a twelve-year-old rape victim that Grisham
heard in 1984, and it took him three years to write
the book. From 1984 to 1989, he got up at 5:00a.m.
every day and wrote for at least two hours. His sec-
ond novel,The Firm, came out in 1991. It was the
number-one best seller of that year and was onThe
New York Timesbest seller list for forty-seven weeks.
He was able to become a full-time writer after selling
the film rights. He wrote eight more novels during
the decade, and each one reached the top ofThe New
York Timesbest-seller list.
Grisham reached an even wider audience when
six of his novels were made into films during the
1990’s. He also wrote the original screenplay for the
filmThe Gingerbread Man(1998), although he was
very unhappy with director Robert Altman’s re-
writes. The television seriesThe Client(1995-1996)
was based on Grisham’s 1993 book by that title.Impact The legal thriller dates back to at least the
1896 short story “The Corpus Delicti” by Melville
Davisson Post. Attorney turned author Scott Turow
(Presumed Innocent, 1987) is the novelist usually cred-
ited with reviving the genre in the late twentieth cen-
tury, and Grisham became its most commercially
successful practitioner. Other lawyers turned au-
thors during the decade included Mimi Lavenda
Latt (Powers of Attorney, 1993), Richard North
Patterson (Degree of Guilt, 1993), Lisa Scottoline (Ev-
er ywhere That Mar y Went, 1993), and Steve Martini
(Undue Influence, 1995).
Grisham’s books sold over sixty million copies dur-
ing the 1990’s. They have sold more than 235 million
copies worldwide and have been translated into
twenty-nine languages.The Pelican Brief(1992) alone
sold over eleven million copies in the United States.
Along with Tom Clancy and J. K. Rowling, he has sold
more than two million copies in a first printing.Further Reading
Pringle, Mary Beth.John Grisham: A Critical Compan-
ion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997.
Weaver, Robyn M.John Grisham. San Diego, Calif.:
Lucent Books, 1999.
Thomas R. FellerSee also Book clubs; Literature in the United
States; Publishing.384 Grisham, John The Nineties in America
John Grisham.(AP/Wide World Photos)