big>Zane Grey was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that presented an idealized image of the Old West. Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was his bestselling book.

Zane Grey was a prolific and popular author of novels about the wild west of the United States, best known for his 1912 novel Riders of the Purple Sage. For nearly three decades in the early part of the 20th century Grey published a novel almost every year. Many of them became bestsellers, including Heritage of the Desert (1910), Mysterious Rider (1921) and Code of the West (1934). Raised in Ohio, Grey also lived in Pennsylvania and New York (where he practiced dentistry before he turned to writing), and eventually settled in the western part of the U.S., in California and Arizona. An avid fisherman, he traveled the world on fishing expeditions and wrote several non-fiction books about the outdoors, including 1925's Tales of Fishing.

Grey was one of early Hollywood's favorite authors: during the 1920s and 1930s, the movie industry cranked out dozens of westerns based on his short stories and novels... Grey is sometimes confused with fellow western author Louis L'Amour... Grey is no relation to Lady Jane Grey.

Author of books:

1903 Betty Zane
1906 Spirit of the Border
1908 The Last of the Plainsmen
1909 The Last Trail ; The ShortStop
1910 The Heritage of the Desert ; The Young Forester
1911 The Young Pitcher ; The Young Lion Hunter
1912 Riders of the Purple Sage ; Ken Ward in the Jungle
1917 Wildfire
1918 The UP Trail
1919 The Desert of Wheat ; Tales of Fishes
1920 The Man of the Forest ; The Redheaded Outfield and other Baseball Stories
1921 The Mysterious Rider ; To the Last Man
1922 The Day of the Beast ; Tales of Lonely Trails
1923 Wanderer of the Wasteland ; Tappan's Burro
1924 Call of the Canyon ; Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon ; Tales of Southern Rivers
1925 The Thundering Herd ; The Vanishing American ; Tales of Fishing Virgin Seas
1926 Under the Tonto Rim ; Tales of the Angler's Eldorado, New Zealand
1927 Forlorn River ; Tales of Swordfish and Tuna
1928 Nevada ; Wild Horse Mesa ; Don, the Story of a Lion Dog ; Tales of Fresh Water Fishing
1929 Fighting Caravans ; Stairs of Sand
1930 The Wolf Tracker ; The Shepherd of Guadaloupe
1931 Sunset Pass ; Tales of Tahitian Waters ; Book of Camps and Trails
1932 Arizona Ames ; Robbers' Roost
1933 The Drift Fence ; The Hash Knife Outfit
1934 The Code of the West
1935 Thunder Mountain ; The Trail Driver
1936 The Lost Wagon Train
1937 West of the Pecos ; An American Angler in Australia
1938 Raiders of Spanish Peaks
1939 Western Union ; Knights of the Range