Salinger, J(erome) D(avid) (1919- )

US writer. He wrote the classic novel of mid-20th-century adolescence The Catcher in the Rye (1951). He developed his lyrical Zen themes in Franny and Zooey (1961), Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). Some of his best short stories, such as ‘For Esmé - With Love and Squalor’, are collected in Nine Stories (1953).

Born in New York City, Salinger studied writing at Columbia University. In the late 1940s, he established an association with the New Yorker magazine, which published most of his short stories. After The Catcher in the Rye became a classic, particularly among college students, he moved to New Hampshire, became increasingly reclusive, and published nothing after the mid-1960s.