Edmund Wilson, American writer. Recipient Aspen award Aspen Institute Humanistic Studies, 1968. Served as enlisted man with Base Hospital 36, and Intelligence corpus, United States army, August 1917-1919.
Background
Edmund Wilson, Jr. was born on May 8, 1895, in Red Bank, New Jersey, the only son of Edmund Wilson, Sr. , a trial lawyer, and Helen Mather Kimball. Both of his parents' family backgrounds included many professionals - preachers, doctors, lawyers (his lawyer-father had served as attorney general for New Jersey under two governors).
Education
Thus some professional expectations accompanied Wilson, Jr. , first to Hill School, a Presbyterian prep school in Pennsylvania (1909 - 1912), and then to Princeton College (1912 - 1916). However, his interests tended toward literature and writing. At Hill he contributed to and later edited the Hill School Record and began reading classical and modern literature. At Princeton, where among his classmates were the poet John Peale Bishop and the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, he continued his literary studies and edited the Nassau Lit.
Career
Married second, Margaret Canby, 1930. Married 3d, Mary McCarthy, 1938. 1 son, Reuel; married 4th, Elena Thornton, 1946.
1 d., Helen. Began as reporter on the New York Evening Sun, 1916-1917. Managing editor Vanity Fair, 1920-1921. Associate editor New Republic, 1926-1931.
Book reviewer for The New Yorker, 1944-1948.
Achievements
Membership
Served as enlisted man with Base Hospital 36, and Intelligence corpus, United States army, August 1917-1919.
Connections
Married Mary Blair, 1923.; married second, Margaret Canby, 1930.; married 4th, Elena Thornton, 1946.