George Rippey Stewart (May 31, 1895 – August 22, 1980) was an American toponymist, a novelist, and a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.
Born in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, Stewart was educated at Princeton University, the University of California, and Columbia University.
He is best known for his only science fiction novel Earth Abides (1949), a post-apocalyptic novel, for which he won the first International Fantasy Award in 1951. It was dramatized on radio’s Escape and inspired Stephen King’s The Stand, as King has stated.
Full Wikipedia entry on George R. Stewart here.
Information about Earth Abides:
Wikipedia entry on Earth Abides.
Lost Book Archives: Earth Abides
Names on the Land
by George R. Stewart. The book was released July of 2008.
New York Review Books Classics reprinted Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States
Book description: George R. Stewart’s classic study of place-naming in the United States was written during World War II as a tribute to the varied heritage of the nation’s peoples. More than half a century later, Names on the Land remains the authoritative source on its subject, while Stewart’s intimate knowledge of America and love of anecdote make his book a unique and delightful window on American history and social life.
Names on the Land is a fascinating and fantastically detailed panorama of language in action. Stewart opens with the first European names in what would later be the United States—Ponce de León’s flowery Florída, Cortés’s semi-mythical isle of California, and the red Rio Colorado—before going on to explore New England, New Amsterdam, and New Sweden, the French and the Russian legacies, and the unlikely contributions of everybody from border ruffians to Boston Brahmins. These lively pages examine where and why Indian names were likely to be retained; nineteenth-century fads that gave rise to dozens of Troys and Athens and to suburban Parksides, Brookmonts, and Woodcrest Manors; and deep and enduring mysteries such as why “Arkansas” is Arkansaw, except of course when it isn’t.
Names on the Land will engage anyone who has ever wondered at the curious names scattered across the American map. Stewart’s answer is always a story—one of the countless stories that lie behind the rich and strange diversity of the USA.
Other books by George R. Stewart
Ordeal by Hunger
The Pioneers Go West (Landmark Books)
The California Trail: An Epic with Many Heroes
Storm (California Legacy)
American Given Names: Their Origin and History in the Context of the English Language (Opr Series)