author
Ernest Poole
1880–1950
A journalist-novelist drawn to big social changes, he turned labor struggles, city life, and family tensions into vivid stories. He is remembered both for eyewitness reporting from revolutionary Russia and for writing the first novel to win the Pulitzer Prize.
3 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Chicago on January 23, 1880, Ernest Poole became an American journalist, novelist, and playwright whose work often focused on ordinary people caught up in modern upheaval. After graduating from Princeton, he moved into reform-minded journalism and wrote about social conditions with a strong interest in labor, poverty, and political change.
Poole gained wide attention for his firsthand reporting from Russia during the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, bringing distant events to American readers in an immediate, human way. In fiction, he was especially known for The Harbor (1915), a novel set against the industrial life of Brooklyn, and for His Family (1917), a story of domestic life in New York that won the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, the first time that award was given.
He died on January 10, 1950. Today, he stands as a writer who tried to connect public events with private lives, blending social concern with storytelling that was accessible, thoughtful, and deeply rooted in the world of his time.