Charles Corn

Background

Charles Corn was born on August 22, 1936 Macon, Georgia, United States. He is the son of Ernest Corn, a physician, and Pauline (Pierce) Corn, a garden writer.

Education

In 1958 Charles Corn graduated from the Washington and Lee University with Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1964 he received a Master of Arts degree from the George Washington University.

Career

From 1958 to 1962 Charles Corn served as reconnaissance officer, diver, and ranger in the United States Marine Corps and also in Pacific theater. In the beginning of 1964, Corn was an instructor in English George at the Washington University. He worked at the American University at the Washington, D.C. in the same position until 1969. Corn was an executive with publishing companies in Boston, Massachusetts, including Little, Brown and Co. and Houghton-Mifflin Co., and New York City, including Atheneum Publishers and Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., and editor-in-chief at the E. P. Dutton in New York City from 1969 to 1982.

Achievements

• Charles Corn is best known as an author of "Distant Islands: Travels across Indonesia" and "The Scents of Eden: A Narrative of the Spice Trade".

Works

More photos

• book

  • Distant Islands: Travels Across Indonesia

    (This book recounts the author's travels through the diffe...)

    1991
  • The Scents of Eden: A Narrative of the Spice Trade

    (This book traces European and American efforts to control...)

    1998

Views

Quotations: "In writing "The Scents of Eden", I discovered that narrative historical writing requires all the invention and imagination of the fiction writer, but with one important constraint. The writer must conform to the facts and discoveries that history dictates to him. He cannot, in my view, for example, take a well-known historical figure and fictionalize him, an effort that becomes a historical novel. While such works have their place — indeed I might try my hand at a similar effort one day — that was not my purpose when I wrote The Scents of Eden."

Membership

Charles Corn is a member of the San Francisco Writers' Round Table.

Interests

• gardening, travel, reading, scuba diving

Connections

Charles Сorn's first marriage was to Katherine Hayes, with whom they had one and only child, Thomas Seery Corn. The marriage, however, fell apart in 1964.

Since 1978, Charles has been married to Ana María Pérez de Achá but divorced again 20 years later.

He lived the last years of his life with his partner Rosalie Muller Wright in San Francisco, California.

Father:

Ernest Corn

Mother:

Pauline Corn

Son:

Thomas Seery Corn

ex-wife:

Katherine Hayes Corn

ex-wife:

Ana María Pérez de Achá

Partner:

Rosalie Muller Wright

References

• Contemporary Authors
  1998