Outlaw Years, The

Interested in many subjects, Robert Myron Coates was a writer of fiction, nonfiction, history, art criticism, and short stories. He was born in 1897 in New Haven, Connecticut. Although he moved often as a child, he returned to his hometown to attend Yale University and graduated in 1919. Starting in 1927, he became a longtime columnist for the New Yorker, reviewing art until 1967. He also contibuted a variety of different texts--among which were more than a hundred short stories.

Mr. Coates wrote his first novel, The Eater of Darkness, after moving to Paris in 1921 and went on to create four more: Yesterday's Burdens, The Bitter Season, Wisteria Cottage, and The Farther Shore. He also wrote three collections of short stories, an autobiography, and three other nonfiction books, including The Outlaw Years, a vividly told story that restores the outlaw to his prominent place in the American frontier history without making him into a hero.

Mr. Coates' short stories were selected to appear in The Best American Short Stories in 1939, 1953, 1956, and 1959. He died of cancer in New York City in 1973.