Educated at Manhattan College, Barrett graduated with a degree in engineering in 1922. He then worked for the Denver Gas and Electric Company for a year before joining Westinghouse Corporation in St. Louis. There he met his wife and the couple were married in 1925. Barrett's true passion was writing and, in 1928, he left Westinghouse to pursue that passion. He contributed numerous short stories to pulp fiction magazines while working on his first novel, The Lady on Horseback, which appeared to popular acclaim in 1938. He returned to Denver where he was named aeronautical consultant to the Denver Public Library in 1941. During the Second World War he became a lecturer for the Army Air Corps and had a weekly radio program, Speaking of Wings. Following the war, and for the next twenty years, Barrett had numerous successful novels, some of which were made into films and he continued to publish until shortly before his death. His works include The Edge of Things (1938), Flight From Youth (1938), The Last Man (1946), Man From Rome (1949), The Left Hand of God (1951), To the Last Man (1952), Sudden Strangers (1956), The Lilies of the Field (1962), Shepherd of Mankind (1964), Pieces of Dreams (1968) and The Lady of the Lotus (1975). |
