Robert Ruark (1915-1965) had a varied career as a newspaperman, journalist and fiction writer. His contribution to the world of outdoor sporting literature stemmed from his love for big game hunting and lifelong dream of an African safari. With poor health and doctor’s orders to take some time off, Ruark went hunting in Africa and wrote a book documenting the hunt: “Horn of the Hunter”.
After his outdoor writing success and a subsequent trip to Africa, Ruark began writing a regular series in Field & Stream Magazine titled “The Old Man and the Boy”, following a young boy’s fictional hunting and fishing adventures with a wise old man in coastal North Carolina.
Outdoor writing consisted of just a small amount of Ruark’s works, and sadly his early death kept him from further writing.
Outdoor books by Robert Ruark:
Horn of the Hunter (1953)
The Old Man and the Boy (1957)
The Old Man’s Boy Grows Older (1961)
Use Enough Gun: On Hunting Big Game (1966)
Robert Ruark’s Africa (1991)
The Lost Classics (1996)
Robert Ruark biographies:
A View From a Tall Hill: Robert Ruark in Africa (2004, by Terry Wieland)
Someone of Value: A Biography of Robert Ruark (2001, by Hugh Foster)
Ruark Remembered: By the Man Who Knew Him Best (2011 by Alan Ritchie)
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