Thomas Beer

Thomas Beer (November 22, 1889 – April 18, 1940) was an American biographer, novelist, essayist, satirist, and author of short fiction. Born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Beer graduated from Yale University in 1911 and studied law at Columbia University from 1911 through 1913. He also served during World War I. Beer was best known for his biographies of Stephen Crane (1923) and Mark Hanna (1929), as well as his study of American manners during the 1890s, The Mauve Decade (1926). He published three novels—The Fair Rewards (1922), Sandoval: A Romance of Bad Manners (1924), and The Road to Heaven: A Romance of Morals (1928)—in addition to more than 130 short stories in The Saturday Evening Post. In 1927, with the help of Eugene Spreicher and Atherton Curtis, Beer produced George W. Bellows: His Lithographs, a catalogue raisonné, with reproductions of the artist's black-and-white lithographs.