John Grisham Arguement to: Inclusion into today's literary canon

In 1984, at the DeSoto County courthouse in Hernando, Grisham witnessed the harrowing testimony of a 12-year-old rape victim.[3] According to Grisham's official website, Grisham used his spare time to begin work on his first novel, which "explored what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants."[3] He "spent three years on A Time to Kill and finished it in 1987. Initially rejected by many publishers, the manuscript was eventually bought by Wynwood Press, who gave it a modest 5,000-copy printing and published it in June 1989."[3] In 1984 at the De Soto County courthouse in Hernando, Grisham witnessed the harrowing testimony of a 10-year-old rape victim.[1] According to Grisham's official website, Grisham used his spare time to begin work on his first novel, which "explored what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants." [1] He spent three years on A Time to Kill and finished it in 1987. Grisham has also cited Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird as an influence.

The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on another novel, the story of a young attorney "lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared."[3] That second book, The Firm, became the 7th bestselling novel of 1991.[4] Grisham then produced at least one work a year, nearly all of which became very popular bestsellers. He authored seven number-one bestselling novels of the year (1994, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, and 2005).[5][6] Beginning with A Painted House in 2001, the author broadened his focus from law to the more general rural south, while continuing to pen his legal thrillers. Publishers Weekly declared Grisham "the bestselling novelist of the 90s," selling a total of 60,742,289 copies. He is also one of only a few authors to sell two million copies on a first printing; others include Tom Clancy and J. K. Rowling.[7] Grisham's 1992 novel The Pelican Brief sold 11,232,480 copies in the United States alone.

A Time to Kill is a 1989 legal suspense thriller by John Grisham. Grisham's first novel, it was rejected by many publishers before Wynwood Press eventually gave it a modest 5,000-copy printing. After The Firm, The Pelican Brief, and The Client became bestsellers, interest in A Time to Kill grew; the book was republished by Doubleday in hardcover and, later, by Dell Publishing in paperback, and itself became a bestseller. In 1996 the novel was adapted into a film of the same name, starring Matthew McConaughey and Samuel L. Jackson.

he story takes place in the town of Canton, Mississippi, which has also featured in other John Grisham novels. Two of the characters, Harry Rex Vonner and Lucien Wilbanks, later appear in Grisham's 2003 novel The Last Juror, which is set in Canton in the 1970s. Harry Rex Vonner also appears in the 2002 Grisham novel, The Summons, and in the short story "Fish Files", in the 2009 collection Ford County (novel).

On the other ...