Nathaniel Benchley

Nathaniel Goddard Benchley (November 13, 1915 – December 14, 1981) was an American author from Massachusetts. Born in Newton, Massachusetts to a literary family, he was the son of Robert Benchley (1889–1945), a noted American writer, humorist, critic, and actor and one founder of the Algonquin Round Table in New York City, and Gertrude Darling. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College. Benchley enlisted in the U.S. Navy prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. He served as a public relations officer, and on destroyers and patrol craft for North Atlantic convoy duty during the Battle of the Atlantic, and was transferred to the Pacific Theater in 1945. After the war Benchley worked for the weekly magazine Newsweek as an assistant drama editor. Harcourt, Brace published Benchley's first book in 1950, Side Street, a novel featuring "hilarious activities of two New York City families living in the East Sixties"—that is, living on the East Side of Manhattan, near the 60th Street. He wrote a biography of his father Robert that McGraw-Hill published in 1955. In 1960 Harper & Row published his second novel, Sail A Crooked Ship, and Random House his first children's book, retold from Sindbad the Sailor with illustrations by Tom O'Sullivan. Benchley was the respected author of much children's fiction that provides readers an experience of certain animal species, historical settings, and so on (Oscar Otter, Sam The Minuteman, etc.).