Thunder ON The LEFT

by Christopher Morley

Overview

Thunder on the Left is a novel by Christopher Morley, originally published in 1925. In it, Morley looks at maturity, individual growth, and human nature. It was adapted as a play by Jean Ferguson Black in 1934.

Movie rights in perpetuity were sold to Picture Entertainment International, Lee Caplin, for $52,000 in the 1990s.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940161100073
Publisher:	Anthony Bly
Publication date:	07/09/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	652 KB

About the Author

Christopher Morley (May 5, 1890 – March 28, 1957) was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet. He also produced stage productions for a few years and gave college lectures.

Morley was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. His father, Frank Morley, was a mathematics professor at Haverford College; his mother, Lilian Janet Bird, was a violinist who provided Christopher with much of his later love for literature and poetry.

In 1900, the family moved to Baltimore, Maryland. In 1906 Christopher entered Haverford College, graduating in 1910 as valedictorian. He then went to New College, Oxford, for three years on a Rhodes scholarship, studying modern history.

In 1913 Morley completed his Oxford studies and moved to New York City, New York. On June 14, 1914, he married Helen Booth Fairchild, with whom he would have four children, including Louise Morley Cochrane. They first lived in Hempstead, and then in Queens Village. They then moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and in 1920 they made their final move to a house they called "Green Escape" in Roslyn Estates, New York. They remained there for the rest of his life. In 1936 he built a cabin at the rear of the property (The Knothole), which he maintained as his writing study from then on.

Christopher Morley in the Feb. 1918 edition of The Bookman (New York City).
In 1951, Morley had a series of strokes, which greatly reduced his voluminous literary output. He died on March 28, 1957, and was buried in the Roslyn Cemetery in Nassau County, New York. After his death, the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune published his message to his friends and readers:

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of a unanimity.

This quote originally appeared in Morley's column "Brief Case; or, Every Man His Own Bartlett" in The Saturday Review of Literature, Nov. 6, 1948