30 Facts About Ernest Poole

Ernest Cook Poole was an American journalist, novelist, and playwright.

Ernest Poole was the winner of the first Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, awarded in 1918 for his book, His Family.

Ernest Cook Poole was born in Chicago, Illinois, on January 23,1880, to Abram Poole and Mary Howe Poole.

Ernest Poole's Wisconsin-born father was a successful commodities trader at the Chicago Board of Trade, his mother hailed from a well-established Chicago family; together they raised 7 children.

Ernest Poole was educated at home until he was almost 7 years old, at which time he was enrolled in Chicago's University School for Boys.

Ernest Poole's was a privileged youth, spending summers at the family's seasonal home at Lake Forest, on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Ernest Poole moved from nuts-and-bolts journalism to the arts, contributing material to the campus literary magazine, The Lit, and penning two librettos for the illustrious Princeton Triangle Club, although both were rejected.

Ernest Poole read translations of Russian classics by Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev, which deeply impressed Poole for their realistic style and aroused what would become a lifelong interest in him in the authors' native land.

Headstrong and confident, Ernest Poole immersed himself in his passion, fiction, while still ensconced as a settlement worker.

Ernest Poole retreated to writing short works of investigative journalism on the boys of the city streets and met with better success, seeing print for one piece in Collier's and two others in the New York Evening Post.

Acquaintances were made and ideas absorbed by Ernest Poole, who increased in commitment to attempt to the wrongs of society through intelligent social reform.

Anxious to learn more about the people of the crowded Lower East Side milieu in which he lived, Ernest Poole set about learning Yiddish, eavesdropping on conversations and jotting down fragments of the dialog he heard for future use in his imaginative writing.

Ernest Poole met and made friends with Abraham Cahan, publisher of the Yiddish-language Jewish Daily Forward and gained an appreciation from the venerable revolutionary of the struggle being waged by oppressed Jews and others against the Tsarist autocracy in Russia.

Ernest Poole spent weeks going from room to room observing and surveying residents and taking testimony about the fate of previous inhabitants.

When his Outlook piece was completed, Ernest Poole stayed on the scene as the volunteer press agent for the union of the striking slaughterhouse workers.

Ernest Poole sailed for England, then proceeded to France before traveling by train to Berlin and on to Russia, bringing with him communications and money entrusted to him in Paris for underground Russian constitutionalists.

Together with a translator, Ernest Poole traveled Russia extensively in the early days of the 1905 Revolution, ultimately turning in 14 pieces to The Outlook detailing his experiences and observations.

Ernest Poole married the former Margaret Ann Witherbotham in 1907 and the couple established a household in the Greenwich Village section of New York City.

For several years after his marriage, Ernest Poole found himself to writing of plays for the stage, an offshoot of the writing profession that pitted low probability of success against potentially immense financial rewards if a piece was successfully staged.

Ernest Poole's urge to write for the stage whetted, Poole would return to more secure forms of writing.

From 1908 Ernest Poole began writing for the New York Call, a socialist daily closely associated with the Socialist Party of America.

Ernest Poole was among those left wing intellectuals who helped to found the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, joining in the task with his friends Arthur Bullard and Charles Edward Russell.

Physically and emotionally drained by the writing process, Ernest Poole spent two months in Europe before returning to the family's new home in the White Mountains of New Hampshire to begin work on his next book.

The world situation so dramatically changed, Ernest Poole recovered the manuscript for his book from Macmillans and spent a month writing a completely new ending.

Ernest Poole was ultimately able to persuade The Saturday Evening Post to send him to the German capital of Berlin to cover the war from the opposite camp, and early in November 1914 he sailed aboard a British ship for Europe.

Ernest Poole would spend three months in Europe covering the conflict.

Ernest Poole followed the book up with a new novel in 1917 dealing with intergenerational conflict, His Family.

From 1920 until 1934, Ernest Poole produced works of fiction for Macmillan at the rate of approximately one a year.

Ernest Poole returned to writing books during the final decade of his life, publishing one work of non-fiction on famous figures in Chicago history and two lesser novels.

Ernest Poole died of pneumonia in New York City on Tuesday, January 10,1950, thirteen days away from his 70th birthday.