Whitlock, Brand

Whitlock, Brand, 1869–1934, American author and diplomat, b. Urbana, Ohio. After working as a reporter and practicing law, he became reform mayor of Toledo (1905–13). Meanwhile he wrote realistic novels chiefly concerned with politics, among them The Thirteenth District (1902) and The Turn of the Balance (1907). His service as U.S. minister and ambassador to Belgium from 1913 to 1922 was distinguished for his efforts to defend the British nurse Edith Cavell and for his care of refugees. His later novels are surpassed by his nonfiction—Belgium: a Personal Record (1919) and a fine biography of Lafayette (1929).

Bibliography

See his autobiography, Forty Years of It (1914), and his letters and journals (ed. with biographical introduction by A. Nevins, 2 vol., 1936). See also biography by D. D. Anderson (1968); studies by J. Tager (1968) and R. M. Crunden (1969).

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Whitlock, Brand (1869–1934) mayor, author, diplomat; born in Urbana, Ohio. A journalist and lawyer, he served four terms as mayor of Toledo (1906–14), running on a nonpartisan reform platform and keeping the government free of graft. He was much honored for his service as American minister, later ambassador to Belgium, during and after World War I. He wrote 18 books, both fiction and nonfiction.