Background

Elliot Harold Paul was born on February 13, 1891 in Malden, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Howard Henry Paul, a varnish manufacturer, and Lucy Greenleaf Doucette.

Education

Elliot Harold Paul was educated in the public schools of Malden and attended the University of Maine, but left the university to work with his brother as a surveyor and timekeeper.

Career

Upon returning to Boston, Elliot Harold Paul worked for newspapers until 1917, when he enlisted in the 317th Field Signal Battalion. After serving in France, he was discharged as a sergeant.

Paul worked as secretary of the Massachusetts Soldiers' and Sailors' Commission in 1919 - 1921 and then returned to France, where he began to write and served as correspondent for the Associated Press in the Ruhr. In 1922, Paul published his first novel, Indelible, which was well received. He followed it with Impromptu (1923), Imperturbe (1924), and four other novels during that decade.

Paul was literary editor of the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune in 1925 - 1926. He published the first serious assessment of Gertrude Stein's work, in the Tribune. In 1927 he was a founder and coeditor of transition, an international review, in the first issue of which were published an excerpt of James Joyce's Work in Progress (later retitled Finnegan's Wake) and the text of Stein's An Elucidation, a "meditation" on form, style, and grammar. In 1928 he left transition, and in 1930 he became literary editor of the Paris edition of the New York Herald.

In 1931 Paul went to live in Santa Eulalia, Ibiza, in the Balearic Islands, remaining there until 1936, when the town was attacked and nearly destroyed by the Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War. The experience resulted in his best-known book, The Life and Death of a Spanish Town (1937), which has been compared favorably with Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio.

After returning to New York, he published The Last Time I Saw Paris (1942), a moving book that treats his life on Rue de la Huchette as Spanish Town had treated Santa Eulalia. These two books became part of a series of works that Paul called "Items on the Grand Account." These include Linden on the Saugus Branch (1947), Ghost Town on the Yellowstone (1948), My Old Kentucky Home (1949), and Desperate Scenery (1950).

Ostensibly autobiographical, his books are largely concerned with people whom he knew and admired at various times and in various places. Like Sherwood Anderson's autobiography, though, they are unreliable for the biographer, as are the various accounts of his life that Paul furnished for standard reference sources. Like Anderson, he believed that facts must be filtered by the writer's imagination. Paul's prolific literary production was the result of his theory that writing must be spontaneous. He refused to "torture" sentences.

Among his works are the early impressionistic novels, a serious political novel, The Governor of Massachusetts (1930), and, after his return from Europe, a series of popular mystery novels, including The Mysterious Mickey Finn (1939), Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre (1940), The Death of Lord Haw-Haw, written under the pseudonym "Brett Rutledge" (1940), and Fracas in the Foothills (1940). Screenplays included A Woman's Face (1941), of which he was co-author, Our Russian Front (1942), a documentary, and Rhapsody in Blue (1946). Collaborations with Luis Quintanilla and other photographers resulted in All the Brave (1939), Paris (1947), and other books.

An accomplished musician who played the piano and the accordion, Paul organized an orchestra in Santa Eulalia and played several jazz concerts in the late 1930's. In 1940 he applied unsuccessfully for an appointment as a lighthouse keeper.

Achievements

• Elliot Harold Paul was best known as a prolific author, whose works were inspired in part by his military experiences. His "The Last Time I Saw Paris" and "Life and Death of a Spanish Town" are considered to be his best works.

Works

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• book

  • Impromptu

    (This striking story is an unusual and ironic study of a y...)

    1923
  • A Narrow Street 1942
  • Mayhem in B-flat 1940
  • The Last Time I Saw Paris 1942
  • Springtime in Paris 1950
  • Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre 1940
  • The Mysterious Mickey Finn 1939
  • Linden on the Saugus Branch 1946
  • A Ghost Town on the Yellowstone 1948
  • The Black Gardenia (a Homer Evans Mystery) 1952
  • Desperate Scenery 1954
  • That Crazy American Music 1957
  • Waylaid in Boston 1953

Religion

A lifelong agnostic, Paul declared himself as such when he entered the Veterans Administration hospital at Providence, Rhode Island, in April 1958, suffering from heart disease and arteriosclerosis. A few days later he was received into the Greek Orthodox Church, explaining that he had always found it attractive.

Personality

Elliot Harold Paul was a large, unpredictable man of great energy.

Quotes from others about the person

• Philip B. Eppard: "Paul fits the bohemian café society of Montparnasse perfectly. His love of good food and drink showed in his portly figure, and his love of women was legendary."

Interests

• piano

Connections

Elliot Harold Paul married Camille Nesbit Haynes in 1928. They had one son. His second wife was Flora Thompson Brown, whom he married in 1935. The third was Barbara Ellen Maycock, whom Paul married in 1945. He married the fourth, Nancy Dolan, in 1951. All of his marriages ended in divorce.

Father:

Howard Henry Paul

Mother:

Lucy Greenleaf Doucette

Son:

Leslie Elliot Paul

ex-spouse:

Barbara Ellen Maycock Paul

ex-spouse:

Camille Nesbit Haynes Paul

ex-spouse:

Flora Thompson Brown Paul

ex-spouse:

Nancy Dolan

Friend:

James Joyce

Friend:

Gertrude Stein