Owen Johnson

Owen McMahon Johnson (August 27, 1878 – January 27, 1952) was an American writer best remembered for his stories and novels cataloguing the educational and personal growth of the fictional character Dink Stover. The "Lawrenceville Stories" (The Prodigious Hickey, The Tennessee Shad, The Varmint, Skippy Bedelle, The Hummingbird), set in the well-known prep school, invite comparison with Kipling's Stalky & Co. A 1950 film, The Happy Years, and a 1987 PBS mini-series, The Lawrenceville Stories, were based on them.

Biography He was born in New York City, the son of Robert Underwood Johnson and his wife Katharine, née McMahon, and attended Lawrenceville School, founding and editing the Lawrenceville Literary Magazine, known as The Lit. He attended Yale University, as a member of the Class of 1900, graduating in 1901, marrying Mary Galt Stockly and moving to Paris, where he did his initial writing. He was a war correspondent for the New York Times and Collier's during World War I.

His first wife died in 1910.