[Mason and the Case of the Demure Defendant.jpg|right|thumb|The Case of the Demure Defendant, a Perry Mason novel by [[Erle Stanley Gardner].]]
Perry Mason is a fictional character, a defense attorney who originally was the main character in numerous pieces of detective fiction authored by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason was featured in over 80 novels and short stories, most of which had a story line which involved a client of his being put on trial for murder. Typically, Mason was able to establish his client's innocence by demonstrating the guilt of another character. Gardner was one of the best-selling authors of all time, and had "135 million copies of his books in print in America alone in the year of his death." (1969).Bloody Murder by Julian Symons, Faber and Faber, 1972, with revisions in Penguin Books 1974, ISBN 0 14 003794 2 The character of Perry Mason was portrayed each weekday on a long running radio series
, followed by the well-known depictions on film and television, including "television's most successful and longest-running lawyer series"The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 1946-Present, Brooks and Marsh, Ballantine 1979, ISBN 0 345 28248 5 from 1957 to 1966, another series in 1973-1974, and more than 25 made-for-TV movies from 1985 to 1993.

Character

The name "Perry Mason" dates to creator Gardner's childhood. As a child, Gardner was a reader of the magazine Youth's Companion. The magazine, best known for producing the original Pledge of Allegiance in 1891, was published in Boston, Massachusetts by the Perry Mason Company (later renamed "Perry Mason & Co." after the founder died). When Gardner created his fictional attorney, he borrowed the name of the company that published his favorite childhood magazine.Erle Stanley Gardner biographic material by William F. Nolan