Winston S. Churchill

Winston Churchill (November 10, 1871 – March 12, 1947) was a best-selling American novelist of the early 20th century. He is nowadays overshadowed, even as a writer, by the more famous British statesman of the same name, to whom he was not related.

Churchill was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Edward Spalding Churchill by his marriage to Emma Bell Blaine. He attended Smith Academy in Missouri and the United States Naval Academy, where he graduated in 1894. At the Naval Academy, he was conspicuous in scholarship and general student activities. He became an expert fencer and organized the first eight-oared crew at Annapolis, which he captained for two years. 

After graduation, he became an editor of the Army and Navy Journal. He resigned from the U.S. Navy to pursue a writing career. In 1895, he became managing editor of the Cosmopolitan Magazine, but in less than a year, he retired from that to have more time for writing. While he would be most successful as a novelist, he was also a published poet and essayist.