Paul Corey was born in Shelby, Iowa, in 1903, into a family who farmed 160 acres. The youngest of
seven children, Corey’s father died when Paul was less than two years old. The running of the farm was
then handled by Corey’s older brothers.
Corey attended a one room school house, and wrote his first story when he was about 11 years old. In
1917, his mother moved to Atlantic Iowa, the Cass County seat, and Corey started high school there.
Money was tight, and Corey held various jobs, including at a jewelry store and a music store. In the
summers, he hired out as a farm hand.
After graduating in 1921, Corey attended the University of Iowa, from which he graduated in 1925 with
a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Chicago, and then on to New York
City, where he hoped to become a serious writer. While in New York, Corey held several jobs, which left
him with little time to write. Having married in 1928, in 1931 he and his wife moved to a small farm
they had purchased a few years earlier in the hope that they would be able to both make a living and
find the time to write. During this period, Corey had several short stories published.
In the mid 1930’s, Corey began work on what would become the Mantz trilogy. The saga, all published
by Bobbs Merrill, covered some 20 years in the lives of the Mantz family in three books: Three Miles
Square (1939), The Road Returns (1940), and County Seat (1941).
Corey brought to his novels the inside knowledge of one who has spent time working on a farm, and
there is ample evidence of a tremendous eye for detail in his descriptions of the actual work of the farm
and the way everyday life passed. One truly gets a sense of what it was like to live and work in the rural
environment in the early 1900’s. Of equal importance is the sensibility that Corey brings to exploring
the social and political attitudes prevalent at the time. It is worth noting that Corey’s expository of
people’s thoughts and actions would not be perceived as very different from what occurs in today’s
world, and this keeps his work relevant in the 21st century.
Although the Mantz trilogy may be considered Corey’s best work, he continued to write through the
1940’s and ‘50’s, both fiction and, out of economic necessity, nonfiction (how-to books on furniture and
home building); in 1968 he wrote his first science fiction novel, The Planet of the Blind (London: Robert
Hale, 1968).