Margaret Widdemer



Margaret Widdemer (September 30, 1884 – July 14, 1978) was an American poet and novelist who won an early Pulitzer Prize. She first popularized the term, 'middlebrow'.

Life
Margaret Widdemer was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Asbury Park, New Jersey, where her father, Howard T. Widdemer, was a minister of the First Congregational Church. She graduated from the Drexel Institute Library School in 1909. She first came to public attention with her poem The Factories, which treated the subject of child labor. In 1919 she married Robert Haven Schauffler (1879-1964), a widower five years her senior. Schauffler was an author and cellist who published widely on poetry, travel, culture, and music. His papers are held at the University of Texas at Austin. Widdemer's memoir Golden Years I Had recounts her friendships with emiment authors such as Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, Thornton Wilder, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Widdemer's essay in the 1933 Review of Literature, "Message and Middlebrow," popularized the term "middlebrow."

Recognition
She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (known then as the Columbia University Prize) in 1919 for her collection The Old Road to Paradise, sharing the prize with Carl Sandburg (who won for Corn Huskers).

Poetry

 * The Factories and Other Poems (1917)
 * The Old Road to Paradise (1918)
 * Cross Currents (1921)
 * Little Girl and Boy Land (1924)
 * Ballads and Lyrics (1925)
 * Collected Poems (1928) jjjj
 * The Road to Downderry (1931)
 * Hill Garden (1937)
 * Dark Cavalier (1958)

Adult fiction

 * The Rose-Garden Husband (1915) (made into the 1917 film A Wife on Trial)
 * Why Not? (1916) (made into the 1918 film A Dream Lady)
 * The Wishing Ring Man(1919)
 * The Boardwalk (1919)
 * I’ve Married Marjorie (1920)
 * The Boardwalk (1920)
 * The Year of Delight (1921)
 * A Minister of Grace (1922)
 * Graven Image (1923)
 * Charis Sees It Through (1924)
 * Gallant Lady (1926)
 * More Than Wife (1927)
 * Loyal Lover (1929)
 * Rhinestones (1929)
 * All the King's Horses (1930)
 * The Truth About Lovers (1931)
 * The Pre-War Lady (1932)
 * The Years of Love (1933)
 * Golden Rain (1933)
 * The Other Lovers (1934)
 * Eve's Orchard (1935)
 * Back to Virtue, Betty (1935)
 * Songs for a Christmas Tree (1935)
 * This Isn’t the End (1936)
 * ''The Singing Wood (1936)
 * Marriage is Possible (1936)
 * Ladies Go Masked (1939)
 * Hand on Her Shoulder (1939)
 * She Knew Three Brothers (1939)
 * Someday I'll Find You (1940)
 * Lover's Alibi (1941)
 * Angela Comes Home (1942)
 * Constancia Herself (1945)
 * Let Me Have Wings (1945)
 * Lani (1949)
 * Red Cloak Flying (1950)
 * Lady of the Mohawks (1951)
 * The Golden Wildcat (1957)
 * Buckskin Baronet (1960)
 * The Red Castle Women (1968)

Children's fiction

 * Winona of the Camp Fire (1915)
 * Winona of Camp Karonya (1917)
 * You're Only Young Once (1918)
 * Winona's War Farm (1918)
 * Winona's Way (1919)
 * Winona on her Own (1922)
 * Winona's Dreams Come True (1923)
 * Binkie and the Bell Dolls (1923)
 * Marcia's Farmhouse (1939)

On writing

 * Do You Want to Write? (1937)
 * Basic Principles of Fiction Writing (1953)

Memoir

 * Golden Friends I Had (1964)
 * Summers at the Colony (1964)
 * Jessie Rittenhouse: A Centenary Memoir-Anthology (1969)