Researching Robert Stone

He was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and once for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Stone was five times a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, which he did receive in 1975 for his novel Dog Soldiers. Time magazine included this novel in its list TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. Dog Soldiers was adapted into the film Who'll Stop the Rain (1978) starring Nick Nolte, from a script that Stone co-wrote.

During his lifetime Stone received material support and recognition including Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, the five-year Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award. Stone also offered his own support and recognition of writers during his lifetime, serving as Chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Board of Directors for over thirty years.

Stone's best known work is characterized by action-tinged adventures, political concerns and dark humor. Many of his novels are set in unusual, exotic landscapes of raging social turbulence, such as the Vietnam War; a post-coup violent banana republic in Central America; Jim Crow-era New Orleans, and Jerusalem on the verge of the millennium.

He was born in Alphington, Devon, England. His name is recorded as a member of the Chapel Royal in 1546 as a yeoman, though he was later promoted to a gentleman; he remained active there into the seventeenth century. At the coronation of James I, he was fourth in seniority, senior to William Byrd.

Among his best-known works is the setting of the Lord's Prayer, written around 1550. It was first printed by John Day in Certaine Notes (1565) and its free rhythmic structure resembles the French vers mesuré.

His work at the School resulted in a two-year travelling scholarship from the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, under which he travelled throughout western Europe and trained in Paris at La Maison Hénin. Stone established a workshop, in time took on apprentices, and in 1939 was made a liveryman of the Goldsmiths Company.

Stone's workshop produced works primarily of sterling silver. It was closed for the duration of World War II, during which he worked on torpedo testing in Scotland. He resumed work in London after the war, continuing to train apprentices and produce works at his workshop at 20 Garrick Street, where by 1955 he had trained seven apprentices. He continued to work at Garrick Street until 1964. He later operated from a workshop in his home at Portincaple, on the west coast of Scotland, until 1980. Stone died in 1990.

Stone's works were distinguished by being hand crafted throughout his career, during an era of increasing mass production of goods such as silverware. He was responsible for a number of major commissions, including a cross and candlesticks for the Temple Church, London; an altar cross for the Wren Chapel, Pembroke College, Cambridge; and a rosebowl made from palladium, a rarely used precious metal, prepared for the Institute of Metallurgy as a gift to Princess Margaret.

Stone featured in a book by Australian businessman and collector Aubrey H L Gibson, who in The Rosebowl describes Gibson's visit to Stone's workshop where he learns some basics of silversmithing, and the creation by Stone of a rosebowl commissioned by Gibson.

Stone married Dorothy Rae in 1929 and had two daughters, Jean (also a silversmith) and Christine (a painter). His papers are archived at the Victoria & Albert Museum Archive of Art and Design.

Stone served U.S. President Abraham Lincoln during the years of the American Civil War, frequently treating maladies from the Lincoln family. Stone was present at Lincoln's deathbed and at his autopsy in 1865. Stone was one of 14 doctors to attend President Lincoln at his death bed. Stone was the only witness to his condition at the military tribunal, and his testimony has been shared by the National Archive of the United States.