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Erle Stanley Gardner (July 17, 1889 – March 11, 1970) was an American author and lawyer, best known for the Perry Mason series of legal detective stories. He wrote nearly 100 detective and mystery novels that sold more than 1,000,000 copies each, making him easily the best-selling American writer of his time.

Gardner was born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1889, the son of a mining engineer. The family moved to Portland, Oregon, and later to the Klondike during the Gold Rush, eventually settling in Oroville, California. He dropped out of Valparaiso University in Indiana early in his freshman year for fighting. He settled in California, where he worked as a typist in a law firm, and after three years was admitted to the California bar in 1911.

His first story, "The Police in the House," was published in June 1921 in Breezy magazine. While practicing trial law in Ventura, California, he began writing for the pulp magazines, creating accurate courtroom scenes and brilliant legal maneuvers resembling his own legal tactics. By 1932 he was writing more than 200,000 words a month while still working two days a week in his law practice.

With the successful publication of the first Perry Mason detective stories, The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933) and The Case of the Sulky Girl (1933), he gave up the law. Eighty Perry Mason novels followed. He also published under numerous pseudonyms, including A. A. Fair, Carl Franklin Ruth, Carleton Kendrake, and Charles M. Green.

His interest in the friendless and unjustly accused led to his founding of The Court of Last Resort in the 1940s, an organization dedicated to helping people imprisoned unjustly. This led to a long-running regular column for Argosy Magazine dealing with potential miscarriages of justice. Gardner died on March 11, 1970, at his home, Rancho del Paisano, in Temecula, California.