Stone, Irving

Stone, Irving (b. Tannenbaum) (1903–89) writer; born in San Francisco. He changed his surname legally, and was educated at the University of California: Berkeley (B.A. 1923) and the University of Southern California (M.A. 1924). He taught economics at the college level (1923–26), lectured and taught at several other institutions (1948–85), and lived in Los Angeles. Early in his career he wrote plays and detective stories, but after a stay in France, he became a highly successful writer of biographical novels. He is noted for Lust for Life (1934), based on the life of Vincent Van Gogh, and a biography of Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961).