John Breckenridge Ellis (1870–1956)

John Breckenridge Ellis wrote more than twenty-five books during his long life. At eighteen months, he contracted spinal meningitis, which left him without the use of his legs. When he was nineteen, his eyesight began to fail, and he taught himself braille. His eyes remained weak for a number of years, but he never lost his sight. Confined to a wheelchair and to a hand-operated tricycle, Ellis nevertheless taught for a number of years, maintained an ambitious writing schedule, and helped organize the Missouri Writers Guild, serving as its president for five terms.

Born on February 11, 1870, near Hannibal, Missouri, Ellis spent his early youth in St. Louis, where his father, John William Ellis, was a preacher and practiced law. Apparently dissatisfied or finding conflict in those two callings, the senior Ellis accepted the presidency of Woodland College in Independence before establishing Plattsburg College in Clinton County in 1880. The younger Ellis graduated from his father’s school in 1886 and began teaching English and literature there. His father installed a hand-operated elevator so his son could get from the family’s living quarters on the lower level of the college building to the classrooms on the upper floor. Ellis earned a Master of Arts degree in 1897. Culver Stockton College awarded him an honorary doctorate for his literary accomplishments. He taught at Plattsburg College until it closed in 1899. He then taught at Central Christian College in Albany, Missouri, from 1900 to 1902. After 1902, he devoted himself to writing.

Ellis’s father and mother, Sallie Breckenridge Ellis, encouraged him to become a writer. A member of the Kentucky aristocracy, his mother wrote poetry under the name of Pauline C. Ewing. She also worked with Susan Elizabeth Blow in the kindergarten movement in St. Louis. Ellis’s father published learned tracts on linguistics under his own name and poetry under the name of Henry C. Blount. At the age of fifteen, John Breckenridge Ellis decided to become a writer and at nineteen sold his first work to the Louisville Courier Journal, a well-known Kentucky newspaper.

Ellis’s most famous book was Fran, which appeared in 1912 and remained on the best-seller list for two years. It and five of his stories were made into movies, and Fran and three other pieces became stage plays. Other titles included In the Days of Jehu (1898), King Saul (1898), Shem: A Story of Captivity (1899), Adnah: A Tale of the Time of Christ (1902), The Holland Wolves (1902), The Red Box Clew: For the Young from Seven to Seventy (1902), Stork’s Nest (1905), Arkinsaw Cousins: A Story of the Ozarks (1908), Twin Stars: A Novel (1908), The Soul of a Serf: A Romance of Love and Valor among the Angles and Saxons (1910), The Story of a Life (1910), Something Else: A Novel (1911), The Little Fiddler of the Ozarks: A Novel (1913), Lahoma (1913), The Third Diamond (1913), The Woodneys: An American Family (1914), His Dear Unintended (1917), and The Mysterious Dr. Oliver: A Mystery Story (1929). His autobiography, which primarily traces his literary efforts, records the first forty-two years of his life; titled Adventure of Living, it was published in 1933. Ellis averaged almost a book a year between 1933 and 1940, publishing six volumes. He maintained that production until 1943.

After the success of Fran, Ellis wintered in California and Oklahoma, while returning to Plattsburg for the summer. He lived briefly in Arkansas. He died in Cordell, Oklahoma, on April 2, 1956.