Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Business of Writing

Samuel V. Kennedy offers the first definitive work on the magazine muckraker who became a biographer, novelist, historian, and master storyteller—Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871-1958).

An upstate New Yorker who graduated from Hamilton College, Adams began his writing career at the legendary New York Sun. He then moved to magazines where he was a medical writer. As a muckraker, he exposed the inefficacy of patent medicines for which Americans spent tens of millions of dollars seeking remedies for everything from the common cold to cancer.

His muckraking and personal lobbying helped gain passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 which earned him honorary membership in the American Medical Association. His success led him to an independent life as a writer for the next half-century.

The book traces the prolific and eclectic writing career of Adams who wrote more than fifty books and wrote the scripts for the films, It Happened One Night (1934) and the 1920’s sensation, Flaming Youth. Kennedy offers insight
into Adams’s relationships with fellow writers, agents, magazine editors, book publishers, and reviewers, which he maintained throughout an illustrious career. Noted for his upstate New York novels and stories, Adams’s ability to adapt to changing times while continuing to attack sham and hypocrisy mark his successful career.