Posts Tagged ‘20th Century’
Murphy, Robert Cushman
by R. D. Madison (2000) MURPHY, ROBERT CUSHMAN (1887-1973). Born in Brooklyn, Robert Cushman Murphy graduated from Brown University in 1911. The following year he married Grace E. Barstow and embarked on the whaler Daisy for the South Atlantic. A naturalist nominally in search of pelagic birds, Murphy proved an able chronicler of shipboard life as…
Read MoreMowat, Farley
by Boyd Childress (2000) MOWAT, FARLEY [MCGILL] (1921-2014). Farley Mowat is one of Canada’s more popular and controversial writers. Born 12 May 1921, in Belleview, Ontario, Mowat graduated from the University of Toronto in 1949. He spent two years during World War II as an infantry officer in the Canadian army. Before completing his degree,…
Read MorePyle, Howard
by Peter H. McCracken (2000) PYLE, [JOHN] HOWARD (1853-1911). Howard Pyle was one of America’s foremost artists of children’s books, and he exerted a dramatic influence on generations of book illustrators. Pyle was born in Wilmington, Delaware. Until attending art school, he was an admittedly mediocre student. A visit to Chincoteague Island, Virginia, in 1876 inspired…
Read MorePoyer, David
by Joseph Navratil (2000) POYER, DAVID [ANDREISSEN] (1949- ). David Poyer graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1971 and is a naval reserve captain, experienced sailor, and underwater diver. Poyer adapted his active-duty navy experiences to write best-selling sagas of naval fiction. The Med (1988), The Gulf (l990), The Circle (1992), The Passage (1995), Tomahawk…
Read MorePound, Ezra
by Robert E. Kibler (2000) POUND, EZRA [LOOMIS] (1885-1972). Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho. As an expatriate living in Europe, Pound’s experiments with translation and poetic form resulted in his vivid translation of the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon poem “The Seafarer” (1911) and in the imagist style of his long poem, the Cantos (1970). The Cantos…
Read MorePorter, Katherine Anne
by Jeraldine R. Kraver (2000) PORTER, KATHERINE ANNE (1890-1980). Callie Russell Porter was born in Indian Creek, Texas, into a poor family and died in Silver Spring, Maryland, early assuming her paternal grandmother’s name. Living in Mexico, New York, Paris, Germany, and Washington, D.C., Katherine Anne Porter concentrates on personal conflict in her writing regardless of…
Read MorePlath, Sylvia
by Claire J. Keyes (2000) PLATH, SYLVIA (1932-1963). Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, and her family moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts, a seaside suburb, in 1936, where she lived until they moved inland to Wellesley in 1942. Her childhood by the Atlantic was significant in developing her nautical consciousness, and she makes many references to the…
Read MoreParetsky, Sara
by Mary DeJong Obuchowski (2000) PARETSKY, SARA (1947- ). V. I. Warshawski, the protagonist in all of Sara Paretsky’s mysteries to date, is a private investigator in Chicago who pursues criminals. In some of her exploits, Warshawski traces them to the wharves, marinas, and beaches of the city; in several cases, as in Blood Shot…
Read MoreSafina, Carl
by Rachel Earnhardt (2017) SAFINA, CARL (1955-). Carl Safina is a biologist, author, activist, and educator. Born on May 23, 1955, in Brooklyn, NY, Safina spent his childhood fishing, breeding pigeons, and playing music. In high school, he participated in a bird-banding survey on Fire Island, a barrier island off Long Island, an experience he…
Read MoreWouk, Herman
by Laurence W. Mazzeno (2000) WOUK, HERMAN (1915-2019). Herman Wouk, author of the best-selling sea novel The Caine Mutiny (1951) and other works about the navy in World War II, was born in New York City, eldest son of Russian Jewish immigrants. Educated at Columbia University, Wouk spent the years before World War II working in…
Read MoreWilson, Sloan
by Robert Shenk (2000) WILSON, SLOAN (1920-2003). Sloan Wilson was a Coast Guard officer before he became a novelist and a yachtsman before he gained a commission in the Coast Guard. He came to regard his Coast Guard experience as more educative than his B.A. from Harvard; the latter two of the three novels that…
Read MoreWilson, Gilbert
by Elizabeth Schultz (2000) WILSON, GILBERT [BROWN] (1907-1991). Having studied in the 1930s to be a muralist, from the 1940s through the 1960s Gilbert Wilson worked in diverse media to interpret Moby-Dick (1851) visually, with the intention of bringing Herman Melville’s novel to the attention of the American common people. In the early 1940s, while…
Read MoreWilson, August
by Sarah Dohan (2016) WILSON, AUGUST (1945-2005). August Wilson, a prominent American playwright, was born Frederick August Kittel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on April 27, 1945 to Frederick Kittel, a German baker, and Daisy Wilson Kittel, an African American cleaning woman. Born the fourth of six children, he grew up in a crowded two-bedroom apartment behind…
Read MoreWilliams, William Carlos
by Robert E. Kibler (2000) WILLIAMS, WILLIAM CARLOS (1883-1963). Although modern poet, novelist, and essayist William Carlos Williams once said that all of his art came out of the work-yard of his lifelong home in Rutherford, New Jersey, where he practiced medicine, that is not altogether true. He also traveled upon, and wrote about, the…
Read MoreWilliams, Tennessee
by Felicia Hardison Londre (2000) WILLIAMS, TENNESSEE [THOMAS LANIER] (1911-1983). Winner of four New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards and two Pulitzer Prizes for his plays, Tennessee Williams is most identified with the American South. He was born in Mississippi and spent his early childhood there until the family settled in St. Louis in 1918.…
Read MoreWhite, E. B.
by Hillary Frey and Mira Dock (2000) WHITE, E[LWYN]. B[ROOKS]. (1899-1983). Best known for his articles in The New Yorker and his children’s books, E. B. White reflected significantly upon his relationship with the sea in two important essays, “The Years of Wonder” and “The Sea and the Wind That Blows.” The first, written on…
Read MoreWarner, William W.
by Brian Anderson (2000) WARNER, WILLIAM W[HITESIDES]. (1920-2008). Naturalist-author William W. Warner was born in New York City. From 1944 to 1946, he served in the U.S. Navy, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant, junior grade, and was awarded a Navy Commendation Medal. Warner is primarily known for his nonfiction work Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen,…
Read MoreWalcott, Derek
by Jill B. Gidmark (2000) WALCOTT, DEREK [ALTON] (1930-2017). Winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in literature, Derek Walcott identifies in his life and work two primary inspirations: the Caribbean Sea and his mixed-race heritage. Born and raised in the harbor city of Castries, St. Lucia, grandson of two white men and two black women, Walcott…
Read MoreVukelich, George
by Donald P. Curtis (2000) VUKELICH, GEORGE (1927-1995). “[I]t was good to be on the Great Lakes,” wrote George Vukelich in 1955 to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal, after a spell as an ore boat deckhand. This sentiment pervades much of his work, including his only novel, Fisherman’s Beach (1962); collections of his newspaper…
Read MoreVonnegut, Kurt, Jr.
by Christopher Lee (2000) VONNEGUT, KURT, JR (1922-2007). Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis but soon moved east, eventually settling in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 1951, where he lived for twenty years. His essay “Brief Encounters on the Inland Waterway” (first pub. in Venture in 1966) is a description of a trip from Massachusetts to…
Read MoreVollmann, William T.
by Dana L. Peterson (2000) VOLLMANN, WILLIAM T[ANNER]. (1959- ). William T. Vollmann’s very ambitious project is a seven-novel series entitled Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes, which interweaves history, myth and legend, imagination, illustrations, and personal travel experience to chronicle the “symbolic history” of North American colonization. The three published volumes of…
Read MoreVidal, Gore
by Donald Yannella (2000) VIDAL, GORE [EUGENE LUTHER] (1925-2012). Gore Vidal was born in West Point, New York, attended Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and served in the army during World War II. A novelist, playwright, and essayist, he occasionally employs maritime settings in his work. In Empire (1987), for example, the sea is…
Read MoreUrquhart, Jane
by Jill B. Gidmark (2000) URQUHART, JANE (1949- ). Jane Urquhart was born near Lake Nipigon, Ontario, north of Lake Superior, where she spent the first five years of her life. Vivid memories of extended time on the north shore of Lake Superior drew her back to that locale in the early 1990s, when she began…
Read MoreUpdike, John
by Thomas R. Brooks (2000) UPDIKE, JOHN [HOYER] (1932-2009). John Updike is the author of over fifteen novels and an impressive body of shorter fiction, poetry, and criticism, much of which has been published in The New Yorker. Born in Pennsylvania, he has lived on the Massachusetts coast since 1957. His fiction typically chronicles the suburban…
Read MoreTheroux, Paul
by Boyd Childress (2000) THEROUX, PAUL [EDWARD] (1941- ). Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts, and received his B.A. from the University of Massachusetts in 1963. Having taught in Malawi, Uganda, and Singapore, he is a prolific novelist and travel writer who divides his time between wintering in England and summering on Cape Cod, a…
Read MoreStone, Robert
by Dennis Berthold (2000) STONE, ROBERT [ANTHONY] (1937-2015). A distinguished, award-winning novelist, Robert Stone turned to nautical fiction in his fifth book, Outerbridge Reach (1992). Born in New York to a family of tugboaters, he served from 1955 to 1958 as a radioman and journalist in the U.S. Navy. His sailing voyages in the Mediterranean and…
Read MoreStevens, Wallace
by Nancy Prothro Arbuthnot (2000) STEVENS, WALLACE (1879-1955). Wallace Stevens is one of the most influential American poets of the twentieth century, whose central concern is with the relationship of the human imagination and the world of physical reality. Stevens grew up in Pennsylvania and attended Harvard College and then New York Law School, graduating…
Read MoreSteinbeck, John
by Susan F. Beegel (2000) STEINBECK, JOHN [ERNST] (1902-1968). John Steinbeck, winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in literature, was born in Salinas, California. As a child, he divided his time between his family’s home in the rich agricultural land of the Salinas valley and their summer cottage in Pacific Grove, where he spent many happy…
Read MoreSobel, Dava
by Marija Miklavčič (2020) SOBEL, DAVA (1947 – ). Dava Sobel grew up in the Bronx, NY, and received her college degree from the State University of New York at Binghamton. A journalist and science writer, Sobel has written six books and co-authored a half-dozen more, mostly centered around astronomy and the history of…
Read MoreSnyder, Gary
by Anthony Hunt (2000) SNYDER, GARY [SHERMAN] (1930- ). Born in San Francisco, Gary Snyder grew up among the forests, mountains, and shores of the Pacific Northwest. A graduate of Reed College (1951), Snyder first went to sea during the summer of 1948 and later spent eight months from September 1957 to April 1958 as an…
Read MoreSnow, Edward Rowe
by Mary Malloy (2000) SNOW, EDWARD ROWE (1902-1982). A prolific producer of maritime history and lore for popular consumption, Edward Rowe Snow was born in Winthrop, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University and earned a master’s degree in history from Boston University. Among his ninety-seven books are Great Storms and Famous Shipwrecks of the New…
Read MoreSmith, Edgar Newbold
by Brian Sateriale (2000) SMITH, EDGAR NEWBOLD (1926-2013). A descendant of a maritime family, Edgar Newbold Smith graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1948. Best known as a collector of naval prints, Smith compiled American Naval Broadsides: A Collection of Early Naval Prints, 1745-1815 (1974). A collector’s catalog of 117 prints accompanied by a chronological…
Read MoreSlocum, Joshua
by Haskell Springer (2000; rev. 2021) SLOCUM, JOSHUA (1844-1909). Joshua Slocum, the first singlehanded circumnavigator and author of the classic Sailing Alone Around the World (1900), was born in Nova Scotia. At about sixteen he left home to work as a deepwater sailor and by 1869 commanded his first vessel. In 1871 he married Virginia Walker,…
Read MoreSiegel, Robert Harold
by Mira Dock (2000) SIEGEL, ROBERT HAROLD (1939-2012). Growing up in the Midwest, Robert Harold Siegel also spent time on Long Island’s Jones Beach, cruised the Caribbean, and sailed and whale-watched off the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, and California. His Whalesong trilogy is based on his underwater swimming in Lake Michigan. This fantasy cycle chronicles…
Read MoreSearls, Hank
by C. Herbert Gilliland (2000) SEARLS, HENRY HUNT “HANK,” JR. (1922-2017). Novelist and author of nonfiction and short fiction, Hank Searls was born in San Francisco 10 August 1922. Graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1944 with the wartime-accelerated class of 1945, he remained an active-duty naval officer until 1954. He served in the…
Read MoreSantayana, George
by Bernard F. Engel (2000) SANTAYANA, GEORGE [JORGE AUGUSTIN NICOLAS RUIZ DE] (1863-1962). The Spanish-born American idealist-philosopher George Santayana drew on his frequent Atlantic crossings in forming concepts of the world and himself. He also used shipboard experience when developing abstract argument and inventing the analogies, metaphors, and imagery that make his writing accessible to the…
Read MoreSandburg, Carl
by Philip A. Greasley (2000) SANDBURG, CARL [AUGUST] (1878-1967). Carl Sandburg, poet, historian, journalist, novelist, labor organizer, folksinger, and collector of American dialect, was born to Swedish immigrant parents in Galesburg, Illinois. Sandburg early understood the beauty, power, and destructiveness of water. He experienced the sea through service in Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War and…
Read MoreRudloe, Jack
by Dennis Berthold (2000) RUDLOE, JACK [J.] (1943- ). Born in New York, Jack Rudloe moved to Florida as a boy and began his self-education as a marine biologist. In 1964 he founded the Gulf Coast Specimen Company of Panacea, Florida, which collects marine specimens for laboratories around the world. A few years later he began…
Read MoreRobertson, Morgan
by Donald P. Curtis (2000) ROBERTSON, MORGAN (1861-1915). Son of a Great Lakes captain, Morgan Robertson was born in Oswego, New York, on Lake Ontario. He wrote popular sea fiction with the authoritative voice of an expert seaman. Sailing from 1877 to 1886, he first shipped out on a Great Lakes vessel before exploring the oceans.…
Read MoreRoberts, Kenneth
by Lawrence I. Berkove (2000) ROBERTS, KENNETH [LEWIS] (1885-1957). Chronicling the lives of Maine coastal families in most of his distinguished historical novels of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Kenneth Roberts acquired and put to use an impressive and detailed knowledge of nautical matters. Even when most of the action takes place on land, as…
Read MoreRoark, Garland (“George Garland”)
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) [ROARK, GARLAND], “GEORGE GARLAND” (1904-1985). Born in Groesbeck, Texas, Garland Roark spent the first two decades of his work life on the advertising staffs of various retail stores in Texas, promoting everything from groceries to jewelry. In 1946 he launched a new career as a writer of popular fiction with the publication…
Read MoreRiesenberg, Felix
by Bert Bender (2000) RIESENBERG, FELIX (1879-1939). Felix Riesenberg was one of the most important figures in American literature of the sea during the 1920s and 1930s; his literary contributions were preceded by many years of first-hand sea experience during the final transitional years from sail to steam. Following the example of his father, a German…
Read MoreRicketts, Edward F.
by Susan F. Beegel (2000) RICKETTS, EDWARD F[LANDERS]. (1897-1948). Edward F. Ricketts, marine biologist and ecologist, was John Steinbeck’s collaborator on Sea of Cortez (1941) and the model for “Doc,” protagonist of Steinbeck’s Monterey novels Cannery Row (1945) and Sweet Thursday (1954), and for “Friend Ed,” one of four principal characters in Steinbeck’s play-novelette Burning…
Read MoreRichard, Mark
by Hugh Egan (2000) RICHARD, MARK (1955- ). Author of the sea novel Fishboy (1993), Mark Richard (pronounced ree-SHARD) has been, at different times in his life, disc jockey, newspaperman, photographer, and private investigator. As a young man, Richard took time off from his study of journalism at Washington and Lee University to work on fishing…
Read MoreRich, Adrienne
by Claire J. Keyes (2000) RICH, ADRIENNE [CECILE] (1929-2012). The author of twenty books of poems and four prose works, Adrienne Rich was born in Baltimore. “Diving into the Wreck” (1972), a poem frequently anthologized, contains her fullest, most dramatic reference to the sea. In this poem, the speaker gives up her old notions of power…
Read MoreRice, Elmer
by Brian T. Carney (2000) RICE, ELMER (1892-1967). Born Elmer Reizenstein, the playwright Elmer Rice is best known for his realistic and expressionistic dramas of urban life. However, he turned to the sea for two of his plays. Between Two Worlds (first perf. 1934; pub. 1935) takes place on the S.S. Farragut, traveling from New York…
Read MoreRatigan, William O.
by Donald P. Curtis (2000) RATIGAN, WILLIAM 0. (1910-1984). Born to a Great Lakes steamboat engineer in Detroit and later adopted by an Ottawa tribe chief, William Ratigan called Michigan his home. This Great Lakes historian’s writings celebrate ordinary Americans who made big names for themselves. His books are seasoned with Lakes poetry, often his…
Read MoreOlson, Toby
by Peter H. McCracken (2000) OLSON, [MERLE THEODORE] TOBY (1937- ). Poet and novelist Toby Olson was born in Berwyn, Illinois, but spent much of his childhood moving around the United States. This constant movement instilled a theme of travel into his work, particularly his novels. He spent four years as a medical corpsman in the…
Read MoreOlson, Charles
by Ralph Maud (2000) OLSON, CHARLES [JOHN] (1910-1970). The poet Charles Olson was born and raised in the inland city of Worcester, Massachusetts, but the family always spent summers in the fishing port of Gloucester; widowed in 1935, his mother provided a permanent base there for Olson. It thus became the location where much of Olson’s…
Read MoreOliver, Mary
by Ted Olson (2000, rev. ed. 2019) OLIVER, MARY (1935-2019). A popular and highly acclaimed American poet, recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Mary Oliver composed numerous lyric poems set on coastal Cape Cod. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Oliver began writing poems when a teenager. After briefly attending Ohio State University,…
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