(A modern classic restored to print -- the Pulitzer Prize-...)
A modern classic restored to print -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that charts the diminishing fortunes of a distinguished Boston family in the early years of the 20th century. Sweeping us into the inner sanctum of Boston society, into the Beacon Hill town houses and exclusive private clubs where only the city's wealthiest and most powerful congregate, the novel gives us -- through the story of one family and its patriarch, the recently deceased George Apley -- the portrait of an entire society in transition. Gently satirical and rich with drama, the novel moves from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression as it projects George Apley's world -- and subtly reveals a life in which success and accomplishment mask disappointment and regret, a life of extreme and enviable privilege that is nonetheless an imperfect life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316735671/?tag=2022091-20
(- A rediscovery. WICKFORD POINT follows "The Late George ...)
- A rediscovery. WICKFORD POINT follows "The Late George Apley as the second of Marquand's acclaimed and bestselling novels that Back Bay has restored to print.- John P. Marquand is regarded as one of the 20th century's masters of sophisticated domestic fiction, occupying a midpoint on the spectrum between Edith Wharton and John Cheever.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316836982/?tag=2022091-20
Marquand was born on November 10, 1893 in Wilmington, Delaware, and grew up in the New York suburbs.
Marquand was the son of Philip Marquand and his wife Margaret née Fuller, he was a scion of an old Newburyport, Massachusetts, family.
Marquand attended Newburyport High School, where he won a scholarship that enabled him to attend Harvard College. As an impecunious public school graduate in the heyday of Harvard's Gold Coast, he was an unclubbable outsider. He graduated from Harvard in 1915.
He served on the editorial staff of the Boston Transcript, leaving this position to serve in the army during World War I. In 1919 he returned to New York, where he worked for a year on the Tribune and later in an advertising agency. During this time he began writing for the Saturday Evening Post, and the detective stories about the fictional character Mr. Moto date from this period.
Having established himself as a popular writer for the magazines, Marquand attained an even wider success in the field of the novel. His finest novel, The Late George Apley (1937), which earned a Pulitzer Prize, is a highly satiric memoir of a typical smug Bostonian; and in Wickford Point (1939), H. M. Pulham, Esquire (1941), So Little Time (1943), B. F. 's Daughter (1946), Point of No Return (1949), and Melville Goodwin, U. S. A. (1951), he continued to satirize upper-class Americans.
Point of No Return was successfully dramatized on Broadway in 1951. Other works include Thirty Years (1954), stories, essays, and articles; Sincerely, Willis Wayde (1955); Stopover: Tokyo (1957); Life at Happy Knoll (1957); and Women and Thomas Harrow (1958). His novels are not deeply penetrating, but they are technically effective and have been popular.
(A modern classic restored to print -- the Pulitzer Prize-...)
(- A rediscovery. WICKFORD POINT follows "The Late George ...)
In 1922, he married Christina Sedgwick, niece of The Atlantic Monthly editor Ellery Sedgwick.
Through his second marriage to Adelaide Ferry Hooker, he became linked to the Rockefeller family (her sister, Blanchette, was married to John D. Rockefeller III). He maintained luxury homes in Newburyport and in the Caribbean.
