Background
Cleveland Langston Moffett was born on April 27, 1863, in Boonville, New York. He was the son of William H. and Mary (Cleveland) Moffett.
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Cleveland Langston Moffett was born on April 27, 1863, in Boonville, New York. He was the son of William H. and Mary (Cleveland) Moffett.
After a common schooling in his hometown, Moffett entered Yale and was graduated A. B. in 1883.
Following four years of newspaper reporting, Moffett was placed on the European staff of the New York Herald, where he served from 1887 to 1891. He was on the New York staff of the same newspaper during 1891-92, then joined the New York Recorder as foreign editor, 1893-94. At this point, he abandoned the newspaper profession and thereafter devoted his time to the writing of books (fiction and non-fiction), plays, and magazine articles, save for one brief period in 1908-09 when he returned to the New York Herald as Sunday editor. One of his first literary tasks was the translation of Paul Bourget's Cosmopolis from the French in 1893.
Moffett's first original book, True Detective Stories from the Archives of the Pinkertons, appeared in 1897; a series of articles, "Careers of Danger and Daring, " first ran as a serial in St. Nicholas and appeared in book form in 1901; A King in Rags was published in 1907, and Through the Wall, a mystery story of Paris, where he was then living, in 1909. From the beginning of the World War in 1914 Moffett was much concerned as to America's attitude and was one of the earliest propagandists in favor of preparedness. After some correspondence from the war front, he returned to the United States and wrote in 1916 The Conquest of America, in which he pictured a possible invasion by the Germans five years later.
When the United States entered the war, he assisted in the organization of the American Defense Society and was made one of its trustees. He made many patriotic addresses, wrote at length on the definition of treason, and was active in the operations of the Vigilantes, an organization formed to combat disloyalty. He was for some time its chairman. In his zealous pursuit of this work, he took part in some exciting street incidents when he challenged "soapbox" orators whose utterances he considered seditious; and he appeared as complainant a number of times in court actions against such persons. He continued to write busily during the war, producing, inter alia, "How to Live Long and Love Long"; "Glint of Wings, " in collaboration with Virginia Hall, issued in book form in 1922; and several "prose poems. " A novel, Possessed, appeared in 1920. He had written a number of successful plays earlier in his career, all on modern subjects. During the last twenty years of his life he made his home for the most part in Paris and died there; though he also spent considerable time in California, adapting some of his books and plays for use in motion pictures and writing original stories for the screen.
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Moffett was married on February 11, 1899, to Mary E. Lusk who, together with a son and two daughters, survived him.