On January 1, 1919, J.D. Salinger was born in New York. His full name is Jerome David Salinger. J.D.'s father was Sol, a Jewish man whose father was a rabbi and ran a successful business. His mother was Miriam, who was from Scotland and was not Jewish like her husband. During this time, mixed marriages were not normal and were frowned upon, so they kept Miriam's background a secret. They kept it so secret, in fact, that J.D did not even find out until after his Bar Mitzvah (Biography.com). J.D. had a very interesting life, one which resembles his most famous character, Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye, very closely.
J.D. attended the prestigious McBurley school in Manhattan for the 9th and 10th grades. He flunked out of the school and he was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Pencey Prep from The Catcher in the Rye was derived from J.D.'s time at Valley Forge. While in his senior year at Valley Forge, J.D. was the literary editor for his class yearbook and decided he wanted to
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returned to New York in 1946 and went right back into his writing career. In 1951, The Catcher in the Rye was published. The book gained mixed reviews, with many critics seeing Holden's story as immoral, but the book quickly gained popularity in America. The book is now part of many high school's curriculum and has sold more than 120 million copies. Salinger did not like his fame and moved to Cornish, New Hampshire two years after Catcher in the Rye was published. He tried to cut off contact with the outside world and only published a few short stories to the New Yorker. While in seclusion, J.D. met Claire Douglas, whom he married and had two kids with, Margaret and Matt. After 12 years of marriage, Claire filed for divorce, stating that continuing the marriage would "would seriously inure her health and endanger her reason" (Biography.com). J.D. spent most of the rest of his life in seclusion before his death on January 27, 2010 at 91 years