author
Ernest Poole
1880–1950
A journalist-novelist drawn to big social questions, he wrote with unusual immediacy about labor, city life, and revolutionary Russia. He is best remembered today for His Family, which won the first Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1918.
3 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Chicago in 1880, Ernest Poole studied at Princeton and soon turned toward reform work and reporting in New York. Early on, he became interested in poverty, immigration, and labor conditions, experiences that shaped both his journalism and his fiction.
Poole gained attention for firsthand reporting from Russia during the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, writing for American readers about upheaval, politics, and everyday life. His fiction often explored the pressures of modern industry and social change, especially in novels such as The Harbor and His Family.
Though his name is less widely known now, Poole was an important voice in early 20th-century American letters: a writer who tried to connect public events with private lives. He died in 1950, leaving behind work that reflects the era's debates about work, family, reform, and democracy.