Who wrote the novel 'The Princess Bride'?

William Goldman wrote the novel The Princess Bride. First published in 1973, it is a fantasy romance and adventure presented as an abridgement of a supposedly much longer work by the fictional author S. Morgenstern.

Goldman’s book deliberately mixes swashbuckling action, comedy, fairy-tale elements, romance, and metafiction. The narrator is also named William Goldman, but this character is an author-surrogate whose biography and commentary blend real details with inventions. The fictional framing is part of the novel’s joke and should not be mistaken for evidence that S. Morgenstern was a real writer.

The story includes Westley, Buttercup, Inigo Montoya, Fezzik, and the imagined countries of Florin and Guilder. Its most famous screen adaptation arrived in 1987, directed by Rob Reiner from a screenplay written by Goldman himself.

Goldman was also a major screenwriter, known for films including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men. That background helps explain why The Princess Bride’s novelistic narration has such a strong sense of timing and cinematic scene-making.