Rodrigues Ottolengui

Rodrigues Ottolengui (March 15, 1861 - July 11, 1937) was an American writer and dentist of Sephardic descent. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, he moved to New York, where he would spend most of his adult life, in 1877.

Biography

One of three children, Ottolengui was a son of Daniel Ottolengui and Helen Rosalie Rodrigues Ottolengui; he had a sister, Helen, and a brother, Lee. He was the editor of Items of Interest: A Monthly Magazine of Dental Art, Science, and Literature for thirty-five years, which he continued to edit after retiring from dentistry; he compiled Table Talks on Dentistry, drawing from articles in Items of Interest. A dental pioneer, Ottolengui was one of the first to use X-rays and was a specialist in orthodontics and root canal therapy. He was also interested in entomology, taxidermy, and photography.

His wife, May C. Hall Ottolengui, died on 10 July 1936; he died at his New York residence the next year of a heart ailment and a stroke caused by a long illness. His sister died on 22 July 1938.

Bibliography

Novels and Short Story Collection

• An Artist in Crime (1892)
• A Conflict of Evidence (1893)
• A Modern Wizard (1894)
• The Crime of the Century (1896)
• Final Proof; or, the Value of Evidence (short story collection; 1898)
• The Ottolengui Portfolio (2005; an omnibus of the 4 novels and the short stories)

Stories

• "The Azteck Opal"
• "The Montezuma Emerald"
• "The Nameless Man"
• "A Novel Forgery"
• "A Singular Abduction"

Non-fiction

• Methods of Filling Teeth
• Table Talks on Dentistry

References

• "Dr. Ottolengui, 76, Dentist 50 Years." New York Times. 13 July 1937: 19.
• Greene, Douglas G. Classic Mystery Stories. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1999.
• "An Artist in Crime" free ebook from manybooks.net
• "A Modern Wizard" and "An Artist in Crime" free ebooks from Project Gutenberg

Persondata
Name	Ottolengui, Rodrigues
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 15, 1861
Place of birth
Date of death	July 11, 1937
Place of death