Dashiell Hammett was born on the eastern shore of Maryland in 1894.
The second of three children, he dropped out of school at the age of thirteen.
Hammett spent his early twenties working as a detective in San Francisco before enlisting in the army during World War I.
He became a sergeant in the Motor Ambulance Corp, where he contracted tuberculosis.
For the remainder of his life, Hammett dedicated himself to left-wing political involvement and the defense of civil liberties.
During World War II, at the age of forty-eight, Hammett enlisted as a private in the army.
Hammett spent the last ten years of his life in a small rural cottage in Katonah, New York.
No longer at the center of the literary world, he continued to drink heavily in isolation.
In 1955 he suffered a heart attack, and died six years later in New York City.
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