James Thorne Smith, Jr. (1892-1934) was an American writer of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction under the byline Thorne Smith. He is best known today for his two Topper novels, comic fantasy fiction involving sex, much drinking, and ghosts, the racily illustrated editions of which sold in their millions in the 1930s, becoming equally popular when released as paperback editions in the 1950s. The son of a Navy commodore, Smith attended Dartmouth College, spent time in Greenwich Village as a part-time advertising agent, and then achieved meteoric success with the publication of Topper (also known as The Jovial Ghosts) in 1926. As hard-drinking as his famous characters, he was an early resident of Free Acres, a social experimental community in Berkeley Heights, NJ, and died of a heart attack while vacationing in Florida. Smith's 1934 novel The Glorious Pool is perhaps the best example of his acutely sharp social humour. Two unrepentant old reprobates, Rex Pebble and Spray Summers, are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the seduction that made him an adulterer and her his hard-boiled mistress. They slip into a swimming pool whose waters have been transformed into a fountain of youth and, abandoing their clothes and modesty with the outward signs of their advanced years, the pair embrace their new-found physical youthfulness and embark on an evening of high jinks that only a couple of well-practised and inveterate sinners could envisage. Into this comedic mix is added the character of Nockashima, their exasperating and alcoholic Japanese house-boy.

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