Hamilton Basso

{{Short description|Novelist, journalist, editor}}

{{more footnotes needed|date=January 2024}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Joseph Hamilton Basso

| image =

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1904|09|05}}

| birth_place = New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1964|05|13|1904|09|05}}

| death_place = Weston, Connecticut, U.S.

| occupation = Novelist, Journalist

| known_for = The View from Pompey's Head

| notable_works = The View from Pompey's Head, The Light Infantry Ball

| alma_mater =

| children = Keith Hamilton Basso

| awards = Finalist for the 1960 National Book Award

| website =

}}

Joseph Hamilton Basso (September 5, 1904 – May 13, 1964){{cite book |last1= Rocks|first1= James E.|editor1-first= Robert|editor1-last= Bain|others= Joseph M. Flora; Louis D. Rubin, Jr.|title= Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=EpX4H4JdZOgC|access-date= May 25, 2010|year= 1979|publisher= Louisiana State University Press|isbn= 0-8071-0354-3|pages= 19–20|chapter= Hamilton Basso|chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=EpX4H4JdZOgC&pg=PA19}} was an American novelist and journalist.

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Basso worked as reporter for several newspapers in New Orleans, wrote 11 novels, primarily about the South, and was an associate editor at The New Yorker for more than 20 years. His best-known work was the novel The View from Pompey's Head, a story of a New York City attorney who returns to his Southern hometown in the early 1950s to investigate a mystery surrounding a famous writer. The book spent almost a year on the bestseller lists in 1954 and later was adapted into a motion picture.