Zane Grey was born on January 31, 1872, in Zanesville, a town in the United States that shares its name with the man who would go on to become one of the country's most widely read writers of Western adventure fiction. A citizen of the United States, Grey spent his life working in English across a striking range of occupations, and the American West became the cultural territory most closely tied to his name.

Grey's working life covered a remarkable spread of fields. He trained at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine and worked as a dentist, and he also spent time as a baseball player before turning more fully toward writing. As a writer, he worked as a novelist, poet, and screenwriter, and he extended his involvement in storytelling by working as a film actor, film director, and film producer as well. His adventure novels, particularly those set in the landscapes of the American West, drew a broad readership throughout his career.

The most noted work associated with Grey is Riders of the Purple Sage, a novel that became firmly linked to his reputation as a writer of Western fiction. His output as a novelist sat alongside his work in poetry and film, and his screenwriting credits added yet another dimension to a career that moved across several creative and commercial forms. The Western genre remained the context in which his name carried the most weight, and Riders of the Purple Sage held a central place within that body of work.

Grey died on October 23, 1939, in Altadena, California. The Library of Congress records him under the authorized form "Grey, Zane, 1872–1939," a pair of dates that marks the boundaries of a career that ran from dentistry and baseball through fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and film production, with Riders of the Purple Sage standing as the title most durably connected to his name.