J. D. Salinger was born in 1919 to a family of Eastern European immigrants. He spent his early childhood in Pennsylvania and New York, before the family moved to New Hampshire, where he attended Phillips Exeter Academy
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He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, achieving the rank of captain before he received an honorable discharge in 1946. Following his discharge, Salinger worked as a magazine writer for Esquire magazine, Life magazine, and McCall's magazine.
He resigned from Time Inc., the parent company of McCall's, in 1955 because he objected to what he felt was an overly sexualized style of writing for women at the magazine. After leaving Time Inc., Salinger published three short stories in The New Yorker magazine between 1956 and 1958 that were later collected into his first book entitled Franny and Zooey (1961).