Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the late 1940s, Susan Eloise Hinton began writing The Outsiders when she was fifteen years old. Hinton loosely based the novel on her high school experiences and published it when she was seventeen. She is credited as one of the first authors of modem young adult fiction.
S. E. Hinton and young adult literature. Although critics had acknowledged the genre of young adult fiction in one form or another for thirty years prior to The Outsiders, many credit S. E. Hinton as one of the first modern writers for young people. The genre rapidly expanded during the 1940s and 1950s, but was limited and predictable. Young adult fiction generally consisted of animal tales, mysteries, science fiction, career, and sports stories. Romances for young girls-which focused on problems of popularity, first dates, high school proms, and best friendsproliferated. Such antiseptic, didactic stories compelled critic Frank G. Jennings to dismiss the genre in 1956 as "mealy-mouthed, gutless, and pointless" (Jennings in Cart, p. 26).
S. E. Hinton agreed with this perspective. She notes: "There was no realistic fiction being written for teenagers.
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