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Concept
John P. Marquand
Summary
John Phillips Marquand (November 10, 1893 – July 16, 1960) was an American writer. Originally best known for his Mr. Moto spy stories, he achieved popular success and critical respect for his satirical novels, winning a Pulitzer Prize for The Late George Apley in 1938. One of his abiding themes was the confining nature of life in America's upper class and among those who aspired to join it. Marquand treated those whose lives were bound by these unwritten codes with a characteristic mix of respect and satire.
Marquand was the son of Philip Marquand and his wife Margaret née Fuller. His mother was a great-niece of 19th-century transcendentalist and feminist Margaret Fuller. Marquand was also a cousin of Buckminster Fuller. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, he grew up in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where his forebears had lived. There he was raised by his three maiden aunts, while his parents lived in a number of other cities as his father pursued his career.
Marquand attended Newburyport High School where he won a scholarship that enabled him to attend Harvard College. His family had a long Harvard tradition, but as an impecunious public school graduate in the heyday of Harvard's Gold Coast, he was an unclubbable outsider. Though turned down by the college newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, Marquand succeeded in being elected to the editorial board of the humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon. After graduating in 1915, Marquand was hired by The Boston Evening Transcript, working initially as a reporter and later on the Transcript's bi-weekly magazine section.
While he was a student at Harvard, Marquand joined Battery A of the Massachusetts National Guard, which, in 1916, was activated. In July 1916, Marquand was sent to the Mexican border. Later, like many of his classmates, he served in the First World War, seeing action in France.
Marquand's life and work reflected his ambivalence about American society — and, in particular, the power of its old-line elites. Being rebuffed by fashionable Harvard did not discourage his social aspirations.
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