Author and editor Malcolm Cowley was born on August 24, 1898, in Belsano, Pennsylvania. He interrupted his studies at Harvard University for service in World War I, in which he was an ambulance driver for the US Army on the French front. He returned to Harvard after the war, and graduated in 1920. He then studied at the University of Montpellier in...
I was a fortunate child in that I was moderately neglected. It meant that I could run as wild as a weaned colt in an unfenced pasture.
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Authors are sometimes like tomcats: they distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens.
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My mother belonged to a German family established in Quincy, Illinois. Belsano was their summer home, but I always felt I belonged there rather than in Pittsburgh. It's hard to be loyal to Pittsburgh.
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Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 207-210. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.
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Became a book reviewer for "The New Republic" in 1919, for which he was later literary editor for 15 years. Was a literary critic, editor, lecturer, journalist, poet and social historian. Wrote introductions to and edited works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thornton Wilder and William Faulkner. Met many writers of the "lost generation" of the 1920s, about whom he wrote in "Exile's Return" (1934), which influenced later bohemian movements, and "Second Flowering" (1973). Is credited with being one of the first to recognize the talents of William Faulkner, who was at the time an obscure writer. Was instrumental in getting "beat novelist" Jack Kerouac into print. Was born in what is now the White Mill Hotel in Belsano, PA. Father was a homeopathic physician. Was Chancellor of the American Academy of Arts & Letters from 1966 to 1976. Drove a munitions truck for the French army for several months during WWI, then returned to the United States to continue his interrupted education at Harvard in 1918, and received his bachelors cum laude in 1920.
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