Born on the new year's day of 1919, in New York, Jerome David Salinger was the youngest of the two sons of Sol Salinger and Miriam. His father was a Jewish Rabbi who ran a thriving ham and cheese import business while his mother was a Scottish-born woman who hid her non-Jewish background as mixed marriage was looked at with disdain at that time. J.D. Salinger was not a good student during his childhood. He flunked out of the McBurney School and he attended Valley Forge Military Academy which became the model of Pencey Prep, Holden Caulfield's alma mater in The Catcher in the Rye. His writing career began with the night class that he took at Columbia University, where he met Professor Whit Burnett. Burnett, knowing Salinger’s talent in writing, motivates and helps him publish his stories in Story and other big-name publications. However, just as he started his career, he had to serve in World War II, and he experienced a nervous breakdown after the war. He first marries a German and possibly former Nazi woman named Sylvia then marries Claire Douglas and had two children: Matthew and Margaret. After returning to New York, he resumed his life as a writer and published his short stories in the New Yorker. Finally, in 1951, he published what became one of the masterpieces of the 20th century: The Catcher in the Rye.

Despite the success of his novel, he started to live a reclusive life, in which he cut off contact with the public, and even with his family and only focused on writing. His daughter, Margaret later wrote a negative account of her father. He also had many controversial relationships, the most famous one being the relationship with Maynard, an 18 year old student. Finally, on January 27, 2010, he died at his home in Cornish. Despite all the controversies, it is no doubt that he was one of the prominent writers in the 20th century and set a new course for literature in the post World War II era.