Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was born in 1885 in a small town in Michigan. Shortly before World War I, after working in several small newspapers as a sports reporter, he began writing for the Chicago Tribune. Lardner continued to write on sports, but also served as political correspondent in the war front in France. Lardner also wrote satire, describing life in the United States and the European front of World War I, as well as skits, songs, and short plays. Friend to F. Scott Fitzgerald, the day-to-day themes in his writing, as well as its simple style, influenced the young Ernst Hemingway, who used the pen name “Ring Lardner” for his earliest publications. Lardner died in New York in 1933 from tuberculosis.