He studied dentistry at Pennsylvania University, and then practiced in New York, where he published his first novel
Betty Zane under his real name, Pearl Grey. His first books, set in Ohio, were based on family history of the pioneer period, and followed in the tradition of James Fennimore Cooper. However, although filled with adventure, they did not really convey the sense of the Wild West in a cohesive or effective form. Then, in 1907, at the Campfire Club in New York, Grey met Charles Jesse "Buffalo" Jones, a conservationist who labored to save the buffalo from extinction. He joined Jones as a writer and photographer on a trip to Arizona and across the Painted Desert and the Grand Canyon, and during these travels met and lived with Native Americans, cowboys, and Texas rangers; thereafter his writing evolved into authentic and convincing descriptions of the West. He wrote his first account of his travels in
Last of the Plainsmen (1908), but did not become successful until the publication of
The Heritage of the Desert (1910), which established his individual style. In the prefatory note to
Last of the Plainsmen, Grey writes, "As a boy I read of Boone with a throbbing heart, and the silent moccasined, vengeful Wetzel I loved.
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