Walter Rollin Brooks

Education

Born in Rome, New York, Brooks attended college at the University of Rochester and subsequently studied homeopathic medicine in New York City.

Career

Brooks found employment with an advertising agency in Utica, and then "retired" in 1911, evidently because he came into a considerable inheritance. His retirement was not permanent: in 1917, he went to work for the American Red Cross and he later did editorial work for several magazines, including "a nonfiction stint with The New Yorker 1932–1933". In 1940 Brooks turned to his own writing for his full-time occupation.

The first works Brooks published were poems and short stories.

Among the latter were a series (from 1937) of short stories featuring "a talking horse and his drunken owner". lieutenant was the basis for a 1960s television comedy series Mister Education

Boucher and McComas, for example, praised Freddy and the Spaceship, saying it "offers wit, sound structural plotting, genuine character-humor, and admirable English prose". In 2009, Overlook Press published a biography on the life and work of Walter R. Brooks, Talking Animals and Others: The Life and Work of Walter R. Brooks, Creator of Freddy the Pig by Michael Cart.

Connections

Father:

William Walter Brooks

Mother:

Fannie (Stevens) Brooks

Spouse:

Dorothy Carman Collins

Spouse:

Anne Shepard