The Real Dope

This early work by Ring Lardner was originally published in 1919 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'The Real Dope' is a novel written in letter form. Ring Lardner was born in Niles, Michigan in 1885. He studied engineering at the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago, but did not complete his first semester. In 1907, Lardner obtained his first job as journalist with the South Bend Times. Six years later, he published his first successful book, You Know Me Al, an epistolary novel written in the form of letters by 'Jack Keefe', a bushleague baseball player, to a friend back home. A huge hit, the book earned the appreciation of Virginia Woolf and others. Lardner went on to write such wellknown short stories as 'Haircut', 'Some Like Them Cold', 'The Golden Honeymoon', 'Alibi Ike', and 'A Day with Conrad Green'.