Mark Saxton was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 and editor

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

. He is chiefly remembered for helping edit for publication Austin Tappan Wright

Austin Tappan Wright

Austin Tappan Wright was an American legal scholar and author, best remembered for his major work of Utopian fiction, Islandia...

’s Utopian novel Islandia

Islandia (book)

Islandia is a classic novel of utopian fiction by Austin Tappan Wright, a U. C. Berkeley Law School Professor. Written as a hobby over a long period of time, it was posthumously edited down by a third by his wife and daughter, and first published in hardcover by Farrar and Rinehart in 1942, eleven...

, and for his own three sequels to Wright’s work.

Life

Saxton was born November 28, 1914 in Mineola

Mineola, New York

Mineola is a village in Nassau County, New York, USA. The population was 18,799 at the 2010 census. The name is derived from a Native American word meaning a "pleasant place"....

, Long Island

Long Island

Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, the son of Eugene F. Saxton, vice president, secretary and head of the editorial department of Harper & Brothers

Harper & Brothers

Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins.-History:James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesley Harper and Fletcher Harper, joined them...

, and Martha (Plaisted) Saxton, an editor and school teacher. He had one brother, Alexander Saxton, also a novelist. Mark grew up in New York City, where his father worked, and later attended Harvard College

Harvard College

Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...

, from which he graduated in 1936. As an adult he lived in both New York and Mill River

Taunton, Massachusetts

Taunton is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the seat of Bristol County and the hub of the Greater Taunton Area. The city is located south of Boston, east of Providence, north of Fall River and west of Plymouth. The City of Taunton is situated on the Taunton River...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

. He married Josephine Stocking; the couple had two children, Russell Steele Saxton and Martha Porter Saxton. Mark Saxton died at his home in New York City from an apparent heart attack at the age of 73 on Thursday, January 7, 1988. He was survived by his children Russell and Martha, his wife having predeceased him by many years.

Career

From the late 1930s to the early 1940s Saxton was a book editor and advertising manager in New York City for Farrar & Rinehart

Farrar & Rinehart

Farrar & Rinehart was a United States book publishing company founded in New York. Farrar & Rinehart enjoyed success with both nonfiction and novels, notably, the landmark Rivers of America Series and the first ten books in the Nero Wolfe corpus of Rex Stout...

, which also published his first three novels. During this time he worked with Sylvia Wright to prepare her late father’s novel Islandia

Islandia (book)

Islandia is a classic novel of utopian fiction by Austin Tappan Wright, a U. C. Berkeley Law School Professor. Written as a hobby over a long period of time, it was posthumously edited down by a third by his wife and daughter, and first published in hardcover by Farrar and Rinehart in 1942, eleven...

for publication. The firm published the book in 1942, but Saxton’s fascination with the work would be life-long. Meanwhile his editorial career was interrupted by service in the Navy during World War II. After his discharge in 1946 he worked as an editor at William Sloane Associates, McGraw-Hill

McGraw-Hill

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., is a publicly traded corporation headquartered in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Its primary areas of business are financial, education, publishing, broadcasting, and business services...

’s Whittlesey House division, and the Harvard University Press

Harvard University Press

Harvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...

, which he left in 1969. Afterwards he was one of the founders of the Gambit, Inc. publishing firm in Boston. From 1980 onward he was a freelance editor in New York.

Works

Saxton’s first novel was Danger Road (1939); it and the two that followed were written during his employment with Farrar & Rinehart, and were published by that firm. A fourth, Prepared for Rage (1947), was also issued by the publisher he worked for at the time, in this instance William Sloane Associates. A long interval passed before Saxton’s next book, Paper Chase (1964), which has the distinction of not being the work that served as the basis for the later movie and television series (that honor goes to John Jay Osborn, Jr.

John Jay Osborn, Jr.

John Jay Osborn, Jr. is the author of the bestselling novel, The Paper Chase, a fictional account of one Harvard Law School student's battles with the imperious Professor Charles Kingsfield. The book was made into a movie starring John Houseman and Timothy Bottoms. Houseman won an Oscar for his...

’s similarly titled The Paper Chase (1970).

In his later years Saxton returned to Wright’s Islandia for his inspiration, and with the permission of the estate set his last three novels in that fictional Utopian realm. It is for these that he is chiefly remembered. The first, The Islar (1969), is a modern-day sequel to the original novel. The others, The Two Kingdoms (1979) and Havoc in Islandia (1982), take place much earlier in the kingdom’s history. All three draw on Wright’s extensive background notes. Houghton Mifflin

Houghton Mifflin

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is an educational and trade publisher in the United States. Headquartered in Boston's Back Bay, it publishes textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults.-History:The company was...

 was the publisher of Saxton’s Islandian novels.

Islandian novels

• The Islar, a Narrative of Lang III (1969)
• The Two Kingdoms: a Novel of Islandia (1979)
• Havoc in Islandia (1982)

Other novels

• Danger Road (1939)
• The Broken Circle (1941)
• The Year of August, a Novel of Intrigue (1943)
• Prepared for Rage (1947)
• Paper Chase, a Novel (1964)

External links