Jerome David Salinger was an American writer known for his novel The Catcher in the Rye. He was raised in Manhattan and began writing short stories while in secondary school.
In 1948, his story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" appeared in The New Yorker magazine, which also published much of his later work. The Catcher in the Rye was published in novel form in 1951, having been serialised earlier. Many adolescent readers appreciated his depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in protagonist Holden Caulfield. The novel remains widely read and controversial, selling around 250,000 copies a year.
The success of The Catcher in the Rye led to public attention and scrutiny, and Salinger became reclusive and led an obsessively private life for more than a half-century. He published his final work in 1965, and gave his last interview in 1980. He died of natural causes on January 27, 2010, at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire.
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