Short Essay On The Outsiders

Researcher (Anthony Willingham) S.E. Hinton (Susan Eloise Hinton) was born on July 22, 1948. She is an American writer who is famous for her novels set in Oklahoma, specifically The Outsiders, which she wrote while in high school. In 1988, she received the inaugural Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library association. Her first and most famous novel, The Outsiders was set in Oklahoma in the 1960's was inspired by two rival gangs at her school, Will Rogers high school, the Greasers and the Socs, and her desire to show sympathy toward the Greasers by writing from their point of view. It was published by Viking press in 1967 during her freshman year at the University of Tulsa. Since then, the book has sold more than 14,000,000 …show more content…
Hinton wrote The Outsiders at age 15. It was inspired after a friend of hers was beaten up on his way home from a movie theater. One of her friends's mom read the manuscript for the book and contacted an agent in New York. Viking signed her up for a small advance and the book was published when Hinton was 19. Her first royalty check was ten dollars and the book was nearly put out of print, but teachers and librarians made it a best seller, and a landmark. S.E. Hinton started writing the first draft of the novel The Outsiders when she was only 17 years old and Will Rogers High School. It took her a year and a half for her to be happy with the final copy after writing and rewriting it. Hinton was not a member of a gang when she wrote The Outsiders, but she was a friend to many of them. She has stated that her biggest compliment was that her greaser friends liked the book. Although she also had friends that were Socs, she didn't consider herself a part of that group. The success of The Outsiders enabled Hinton to attend the University of Tulsa where she earned a degree in education in 1970. During her career in teaching, though, she decided she didn't have the physical stamina to be a teacher, because she had been teaching all day