Stephen King

945 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Stephen king's accomplishments

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his parents separated when Stephen was a toddler, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of the elderly couple. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.

Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and then Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.

He and Tabitha Spruce married in January of 1971. He met Tabitha in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University of Maine at Orono, where they both worked as students. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.

Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.

In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine.

Show More
Related

  • Differing Perspectives of the American Civil War

    910 Words  | 2 Pages

    The economies of the two regions are still very different. The North tends to be more pro-union and workers rights. Whereas the South, tend to have more right-to-work states, which embraces more of corporate rights stance.

    Read More

  • Samuel Colt and the Colt Revolver

    1354 Words  | 3 Pages

    eventually expelled from it for his behavior. After he was expelled from the Amherst Academy

    Read More

  • Slavery in America between 1800 and 1860

    724 Words  | 2 Pages

    Within the economy a great development had been achieved when the upper south handed its power to the lower south all due to the rise of an agricultural production. This expansion was led by the excessive growth of cotton in the southern areas. It spread rapidly throughout America and especially in the South. During these times it gave another reason to keep the slavery at its all time high. Many wealthy planters started a ‘business’ by having their slaves work the cotton plantations, which this was one of a few ways slavery was still in full effect. Not only were there wealthy planters, at this time even if you were a small slave-holder you were still making money. While all of this had been put into the works, Americans had approximately 410,000 slaves move from the upper south to the ‘cotton states’. This in turn created a sale of slaves in the economy to boom throughout the Southwest. If there is a question as to ‘why’, then lets break it d...

    Read More

  • Slavery in the Late 1700s and Early 1800s.

    820 Words  | 2 Pages

    Slavery had a big impact on the market, but most of it was centered on the main slave crop, cotton. Primarily, the south regulated the cotton distribution because it was the main source of income in the south and conditions were nearly perfect for growing it. Cheap slave labor made it that much more profitable and it grew quickly as well. Since the development in textile industry in the north and in Britain, cotton became high in demand all over the world. The south at one point, was responsible for producing “eighty percent of the world’s cotton”. Even though the South had a “labor force of eighty-four percent working, it only produced nine percent of the nations manufactured goods”, (Davidson 246). This statistic shows that the South had an complete advantage in manpower since slavery wasn’t prohibited. In the rural South, it was easy for plantation owners to hire slaves to gather cotton be...

    Read More

  • Sectionalism In The United States:

    1378 Words  | 3 Pages

    The most important difference between the north and south was the issue of slavery. The South was primarily agricultural, and the southern economy was based upon the existence of large family farms known as plantations. The plantation economy relied on cheap labor in the form of slaves to produce tobacco and cotton. Farmers on the plantation did not do the work themselves; they needed slaves in order to make the largest amount of money possible. The North, however, was primarily industrial in nature. The North believed that all men should be able to work and support themselves and their families, regardless of color. They also felt that if a man were happy doing his job, then he would be more productive. Therefore, both he and the business would make more money.

    Read More

  • Stephen King

    759 Words  | 2 Pages

    In 1971 of January, he married Tabitha Spruce. They met in the Fogler Library at University of Maine at Orono. They were both students at the university. Since he could not be a teacher automatically, him and his wife, Tabitha, worked at an industrial laundry. He started his short story writing with Men’s Magazine. He sold his stories really well through this. In 1967, He sold many books including ‘The Glass Floor’. He finally became an English teacher at Hampden High School. After his mother’s death, he and Tabitha decided to go to Colorado. After 4 years of staying in Colorado, they went back to Maine.

    Read More

  • The Road to the American Civil War

    1339 Words  | 3 Pages

    The North and South were forming completely different economies, and therefore completely different geographies, from one another during the period of the Industrial Revolution and right before the Civil War. The North’s economy was based mainly upon industrialization from the formation of the American System, which was producing large quantities of goods in factories. The North was becoming much more urbanized due to factories being located in cities, near the major railroad systems for transportation of the goods, along with the movement of large groups of factory workers to the cities to be closer to their jobs. With the North’s increased rate of job opportunities, many different people of different ethnic groups and classes ended up working together. This ignited the demise of the North’s social order. The South was not as rapidly urbanizing as the North, and therefore social order was still in existence; the South’s economy was based upon the production of cotton after Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin. Large cotton plantations’ production made up the bulk of America’s...

    Read More

  • Comparing the North and South

    821 Words  | 2 Pages

    Industrialization was a big part of the economy in the North. Workers made most goods one item at a time. During the first phase of industrialization employes divided jobs so that each person would specialize in a certain job. In the second phase entrepreneurs built factories to bring specialized workers to work together to make goods all under one roof. During the third and final phase workers used machines to complete tasks. Goods were finished much faster by machine than by hand. They were able to mass produce. Factories made at least two thirds of the country's manufactured goods. Things developed slower in the South. Agriculture, especially the production of cotton, produced great profits. Building new industry meant planters would have to begin selling their slaves. So instead they chose to invest in agriculture and enslaved Africans. The market for manufactured goods was extremely small. Some southerners did not want industry.

    Read More

  • Carrie by Stephen King

    900 Words  | 2 Pages

    The book uses fictional documents, such as book excerpts, news reports, and hearing transcripts, to frame the story of Carietta "Carrie" White, a 17-year-old girl from Chamberlain, Maine. Carrie's mother, Margaret, a fanatical Christian fundamentalist, has a vindictive and unstable personality, and over the years has ruled Carrie with an iron rod and repeated threats of damnation, as well as occasional physical abuse. Carrie does not fare much better at her school where her frumpy looks, lack of friends and lack of popularity with boys make her the butt of ridicule, embarrassment, and public humiliation by her fellow teenage peers.

    Read More

  • Slavery

    1131 Words  | 3 Pages

    The debate over the economic advantages of slavery in the South has raged ever since the first slaves began working in the cotton fields of the Southern States. Initially, the wealth of the New World was in the form of raw materials and agricultural goods such as cotton, sugar, and tobacco. The continuing demand for slaves' labor arose from the development of plantation agriculture, the long-term rise in prices and consumption of sugar, and the demand for miners. Not only did Africans represent skilled laborers, but also they were a relatively cheap resource to the South. Consequently, they were well suited for plantation agriculture. Whi...

    Read More

  • The Dark Tower by Stephen King

    1558 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Dark Tower – Stephen King The Dark Tower is a series of stories that follow the main character, Roland "The Last Gunslinger", as he travels across a harsh desert on a mission to find the "man in black". His mission is to make it safely to the Tower in order to save himself and the very existence of the universe. The entire series revolves around the tower and how essential it is. The tower is a central point where different planes of existence merge and if Roland doesn't make it there before it gets destroyed then everything else will be destroyed along with it.

    Read More

  • The Civil War

    787 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the days of the American Revolution and of the adoption of the Constitution, differences between North and South were dwarfed by their common interest in establishing a new nation. But sectionalism steadily grew stronger. During the 19th century the South remained almost completely agricultural, with an economy and a social order largely founded on slavery and the plantation system. These mutually dependent institutions produced the staples, especially cotton, from which the South derived its wealth. The North had its own great agricultural resources, was always more advanced commercially, and was also expanding industrially.

    Read More

  • American Civil War

    1028 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the North there was very little need for slaves because agriculture was not a characteristic of the North. In the South however, agriculture that required slaves was more important. Most of the produce came from the South, such as cotton, tobacco and corn. Most of these products were imported to Europe where the fetched a high price. ...

    Read More

  • The Body by Stephen King

    843 Words  | 2 Pages

    For my book I chose to read The Body by Stephen King. This novel is about four young boys taking a journey to find a body somewhere in the woods that is at the county line. This story is about more than just four boys going on an adventure its about them becoming closer to each other and learning real life lessons along the way. The four boys are all going into their first year of middle school so this is a time in their life when they learn things that will help them in life.

    Read More

  • The Influence of Martin Luther King Jr.

    812 Words  | 2 Pages

    To begin with, Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929.2 His father, Martin Luther King Sr. who was a pastor, and his mother Alberta, who was a schoolteacher who raised both King and his two siblings.3 King was very religious because the three generations of men, starting with his great-grandfather, were all preachers. His younger brother and uncle were also preachers. Religion had a big influence on his life. King grew up in a neighborhood of average citizens. No great wealth or possessions, leaders, or anyone of great stature. His best friends were religious, attended Sunday school together and church which King was considered their second home.

    Read More

More about Stephen King

Open Document