DeVoto, Bernard

DeVoto, Bernard (Augustine)

(1897–1955) author, critic, historian; born in Ogden, Utah. He taught marksmanship in the army during World War I, then graduated from Harvard in 1920. He taught school in Utah, held an instructorship at Northwestern University, and published three novels before joining the Harvard faculty in 1929. His critical study, Mark Twain's America, appeared in 1932. In 1936 he left Harvard to become editor of The Saturday Review of Literature (until 1938). From 1943–52 he published three surveys of the exploration and settlement of the American West, and produced an edition of the journals of Lewis and Clark (1953).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.