John Gardner
(1933–1982)

John Champlin Gardner, Jr., was born July 21, 1933 in Batavia, NY. He first achieved fame for a novel he based on the old English poem, Beowulf, which tells about the struggle between a hero name Beowulf and a monster called Grendel. Gardner's novel, entitled Grendel (1971), gives this traditional story a spectacular twist—telling it from the monster's point of view. His novel October Light (1976) was named one of the ten best books of 1976 by Time and also won him a National Book Critics Circle award for fiction in 1976. Although Gardner is best known for his novels, he also wrote collections of short stories for young people, such as Dragon, Dragon and Other Timeless Tales (1975). Gardner was known for putting an interesting twist on well-known fairy tales. He died in a motorcycle accident in 1982 at the age of 49.

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