The Eyes Of The World

In accordance to the Publisher's Weekly, The Eyes of the World was the Best-Selling Book for 1914. It delves into what Harold Bell Wright interprets as the pretentious world of artists, authors, reviewers, and their affluent supporters. Two of the leading characters are the popular writer, Conrad LaGrange and Aaron King, a hopeful artist. Conrad sadly defines his works as "filthy stories in good English" and senses he has sold his humanity to become prestigious. While in California, recuperating from a physical rundown, he became friends with Aaron King whose mother he recognized when he was a child. Conrad became a counselor to the young lad, for he saw the drawbacks of prestige from his own happening. Harold Bell Wright was a record breaking U. S. author of fiction, essays, and nonfiction. Though greatly overlooked or disregarded in the mid-20th century, he is told to have been the first U. S. author to sell a million reproductions of a book and the first to make $1 million from creating fiction. From 1902 to 1942 Harold made 19 novels, many theatrical dramas, and numerous magazine articles. Over 15 films were rendered or stated to be composed from Harold's novels, such as Gary Cooper's first key film, The Winning of Barbara Worth in 1926 and the John Wayne motion picture, The Shepherd of the Hills in 1941. Born in Rome, New York to Alma Watson and William A. Wright. In his life memoir, To My Sons, he narrates that his father, a past Civil War lieutenant and lifelong alcoholic, heaved "his wife and children from place to place, existing from hand to mouth, sinking deeper and deeper, as the years passed, into the slough of wretched poverty." His mother took much care to her kids, educating them ethical standards and read to them from the Bible, Shakespeare, The Pilgrim's Progress and Hiawatha.