DuBose Heyward

Edwin DuBose Heyward (August 31, 1885 – June 16, 1940) was an American author best known for his 1925 novel Porgy. He and his wife Dorothy, a playwright, adapted it as a 1927 play of the same name. The couple worked with composer George Gershwin to adapt the work as the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. It was later adapted as a 1959 film of the same name.

Heyward also wrote poetry and other novels and plays, as well as the children's book The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes (1939).

Childhood, education, and early career

Heyward was born in 1885 in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of Jane Screven (DuBose) and Edwin Watkins Heyward. He was a descendant of Judge Thomas Heyward Jr., a South Carolinian signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, and his wife, who were of the planter elite.

As a child and young man, Heyward was frequently ill. He contracted polio when he was 18. Two years later he contracted typhoid fever, and the following year fell ill with pleurisy. He described himself as having been "a miserable student" who was uninterested in learning. He dropped out of high school in his first year at age fourteen but had a lifelong and serious interest in literature. He was able to support himself as he became a successful insurance agent. While confined to his sickbed, he wrote numerous verses and stories.

In 1913 Heyward wrote a one-act play, An Artistic Triumph, which was produced in a local theater. Although described as a derivative work that reportedly showed little promise, Heyward was encouraged enough to pursue a literary career. In 1917, while convalescing, he began to work seriously at fiction and poetry. In 1918 he published his first short story, "The Brute", in Pagan, a Magazine for Eudaemonists.