James Negley Farson was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author and adventurer.

Born in Plainfield, New Jersey

Plainfield, New Jersey

Plainfield is a city in Union County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population increased to a record high of 49,808....

, Farson was raised by his eccentric grandfather, the Civil War General James Negley. He was educated at Andover

Phillips Academy

Phillips Academy is a selective, co-educational independent boarding high school for boarding and day students in grades 9–12, along with a post-graduate year...

 and read civil engineering at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

. He was expelled from this institution and emigrated to England. He went into journalism and travelled to Russia, being present in Petrograd the day the Bolshevik Revolution broke out. Farson went on to become one of the most renowned foreign correspondents of his day, interviewing Gandhi in India, witnessing Gandhi's arrest in Poona, witnessing bank-robber John Dillinger

John Dillinger

John Herbert Dillinger, Jr. was an American bank robber in Depression-era United States. He was charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana police officer during a shoot-out. This was his only alleged homicide. His gang robbed two dozen banks and four police stations...

's naked body in the morgue just after he had been shot down by Hoover’s men and meeting Hitler, who described Farson’s blond son, Daniel, as a “good Aryan boy.”

A renowned fisherman, Farson wrote one of the classics of fishing literature, Going Fishing. The story of his life is told in his two volumes of autobiography "The Way Of a Transgressor" and "A Mirror for Narcissus".

He partied with F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...

 and supposedly out-drank Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

.

Publications

• 1926 Sailing Across Europe
• 1936 The Way Of a Transgressor
• 1939 The Story of a Lake
• 1941 Bomber's Moon
• 1941 Behind God's back
• 1946 Going Fishing
• 1949 Last Chance in Africa
• 1951 Caucasian Journey
• 1957 A Mirror for Narcissus
• 1958 The lost world of the Caucasus

External Links

Negley Farson papers at the University of Wyoming

University of Wyoming

The University of Wyoming is a land-grant university located in Laramie, Wyoming, situated on Wyoming's high Laramie Plains, at an elevation of 7,200 feet , between the Laramie and Snowy Range mountains. It is known as UW to people close to the university...

 - American Heritage Center

American Heritage Center

The American Heritage Center is the University of Wyoming's repository of manuscripts, rare books, and the university archives. Its collections focus on Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain West and a select handful of national topics: environment and conservation, the mining and petroleum industries,...