James A. Michener: Early Works

Michener had a late start to his writing career, publishing his first novel Tales of the South Pacific in 1947 at the age of 40.  Though late to start, his career quickly took off.  Tales of the South Pacific was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein into the hit musical South Pacific in 1949.

Sponsored by Holiday magazine and Reader’s Digest, Michener returned to Asia in the early 1950s, revisiting Polynesia and exploring Japan, Korea, and Siam (now Thailand).  His travels inspired a book of short stories (Return to Paradise, 1951), a non-fiction volume on Asian culture (The Voice of Asia, 1951), two novels (The Bridges at Toko-ri, 1953 and Sayonara, 1954), and a history of Japanese printmaking in the Edo period (Floating World, 1954.)  In 1956, he was tapped by NBC to host the television documentary Assignment: Southeast Asia which took viewers on a tour through Java, Bali, Malay, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma (May, 2005). 

In 1956, Michener and his wife, Mari, traveled to Austria to cover the emerging Hungarian Revolution for Reader’s Digest. Here, Michener chronicled the experience of hundreds of refugees, fleeing brutal persecution by the Hungarian State Security Police.  What initially was intended to be a serialized report evolved into a full-fledged book, The Bridge at Andau, which was published in 1957.  With this work, Michener began to emerge as a popular writer, capable of weaving complicated, nuanced narratives into compelling stories.

Who is Virgil T. Fry?, the first published work of fiction by James A. Michener, appeared in The Clearing House journal in October of 1941.  Click here to read or download this story.