Joseph Hergesheimer was an American author who lived from February 15, 1880, to April 25, 1954. He was best known for writing realistic stories about the hedonistic lives of the rich. It was February 15, 1880, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that Hergesheimer was born. He went to a Quaker school for school and then graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The Lay Anthony, Hergesheimer's first book, came out in 1914. The next book, Three Black Pennys, came out in 1917. It was a fictional account of the lives of three generations of Pennsylvania ironmasters. It established the author's way of writing about upper-class people using what he called "aestheticism," a style of flowery description. Three Black Pennies was also the first American book that Alfred A. Knopf, a new publishing house, put out. The books Java Head (1919), Linda Condon (1919), and Balisand (1924) by Hergesheimer also got good reviews.