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Erich Segal

Biography

Erich Wolf Segal (June 16, 1937 – January 17, 2010) was an American author, screenwriter, educator, and classicist who wrote the bestselling novel Love Story (1970) and its hit film adaptation.

Born and raised in a Jewish household in Brooklyn, New York, Segal was the first of three brothers. His father was a rabbi and his mother was a homemaker. His interest in writing and narrating stories developed as a child. He went to Midwood High School, during which he suffered a serious accident while canoeing. His coach advised him to jog as a part of his rehabilitation, which ended up becoming his passion and caused him to participate in the Boston Marathon more than 12 times. He attended Harvard College, graduating as both the class poet and Latin salutatorian in 1958, and then obtained his master's degree (in 1959) and a doctorate (in 1965) in comparative literature from Harvard University, after which he started teaching at Yale.

In 1967, through connections on Broadway, Segal was given the opportunity to collaborate on the screenplay for the Beatles' 1968 motion picture Yellow Submarine, based on a story by Lee Minoff.

His first academic book, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus (1968), published by the Harvard University Press, gave him considerable recognition and chronicled the great Roman comic playwright who inspired the Broadway hit A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962).

In the late 1960s, Segal collaborated on other screenplays. He wrote a romantic story about a Harvard student and a Radcliffe student but failed to sell it. Literary agent Lois Wallace at the William Morris Agency then suggested he turn the script into a novel, and the result was Love Story (1970). A New York Times No. 1 bestseller, the book became the top selling work of fiction for 1970 in the United States, and was translated into 33 languages worldwide. The motion picture of the same name was the number one box office attraction of 1970.

The novel proved problematic for Segal. He acknowledged that its success unleashed "egotism bordering on megalomania" and he was denied tenure at Yale. Moreover, Love Story "was ignominiously bounced from the nomination slate of the National Book Awards after the fiction jury threatened to resign." Segal later said that the book "totally ruined me." He would go on to write more novels and screenplays, including the 1977 sequel to Love Story, titled Oliver's Story.