Marquand, John Phillips

Marquand, John Phillips (mär`kwänd), 1893–1960, American novelist, b. Wilmington, Del., grad. Harvard, 1915. Most of Marquand's gently satirical novels examine life among the rich and socially prominent of New England. Often they concern people too hidebound by money or tradition to change their lives for the better. He first won popularity with a series about a Japanese detective, "Mr. Moto," which ran in the Saturday Evening Post. His reputation as a novelist was established with The Late George Apley (1937, Pulitzer Prize) about a conservative Bostonian. Among his other novels are Wickford Point (1939), H. M. Pulham, Esquire (1941), So Little Time (1943), Point of No Return (1949), Melville Goodwin, U S A (1951), and Life at Happy Knoll (1957).

Bibliography

See study by J. Gross (1963).

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Marquand, John Phillips 

Born Nov. 10, 1893, in Wilmington, Del.; died July 16, 1960, in Newburyport Mass. American author.

Marquand graduated from Harvard University in 1915. He fought in World War I. His novel The Late George Apley (1937 Pulitzer Prize) brought him fame; its hero was a wealthy Bostonian who changed from a rebel into a smug bourgeois. In the novels Wickford Point (1939), H. M. Pulham, Esquire (1941), and Sincerely, Willis Wayde (1955) Marquand portrayed the degradation of the aristocracy and the corrupting influence of business and careerism. In his last work, Women and Thomas Harrow (1958), Marquand depicted the life of New York artists in the 1820’s. He was also the author of several detective stories.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
G. M. Pulem, eskvair. Afterword by N. Samokhvalov. Moscow, 1963.

REFERENCE

Gross J. J. John P. Marquand. New York, 1963.