Richard Bach
Richard Bach,
author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, was born in Oak Park, Illinois,
in 1936. He claims to be a direct descendant of the famous composer,
Johann Sebastian Bach.
The author has had a life-long love of flight. His extensive military
career includes service in the Navy Reserve, Air National Guard, and Air
Force. He has worked as a technical writer for Douglas Aircraft, and
became a contributing editor of Flying magazine.
Bach’s first book, Stranger to the Ground, was published in 1963. This
and his second book, 1966’s Biplane, were directly about flying. His
later books would touch on the topic of flight, though it was often used
as a philosophical metaphor.
This was the case of Bach’s most famous work, Jonathan Livingston
Seagull, which was published in 1970. The philosophical novel focused on
a seagull who flew for pleasure. The book became a bestseller and was
adapted for film in 1973.
Bach published 1974’s The Gift of Wings and 1976’s There’s No Such Place
as Far Away after the success of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but his
1977 book, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, was
considered its follow-up. Another philosophical novel, it focuses on two
barnstorming pilots.
Bach has written nearly twenty books, the most recent being Hypnotizing
Maria, published in 2009. He has also written a series of five novellas,
The Ferret Chronicles, which were also republished in 2005 as a single
volume titled Curious Lives: Adventures from the Ferret Chronicles.
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