The man who would one day dominate the published Chicken Soup series, Jack Canfield, was born August 19, 1944 in Forth Worth, Texas. Not much is said about his parents or his childhood in the media, but we do know that Jack attended Linsly Military Institute, a boarding school in Wheeling, West Virginia. After high school, Jack left West Virginia for Harvard, from which he graduated in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in Chinese history.
In 1971, Jack married his first wife Judith, whom he met while studying for his master’s degree at the University of Massachusetts. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1976. Just two years later, Jack married Georgie Lee Noble and together they had a son.
The consummate student, Jack received an honorary Ph.D from the University of Santa Monica in 1981. And nearly a decade later, in 1990, Jack met Mark Victor Hansen, with little knowledge that the two would become successful business partners. Mark and Jack had the idea of collecting inspirational stories and compiling them into a single book that would appeal to everyone. Three years later, Chicken Soup for the Soul was published, and together Jack and Mark climbed to the top of bestsellers‘ ladder. (more…)
