author
Hutchins Hapgood
1869–1944
A vivid observer of city life, labor politics, and bohemian culture, he wrote with unusual sympathy about the people and ideas reshaping America at the turn of the 20th century. His books and journalism still feel immediate because they mix social reporting with a personal, curious voice.
5 Audiobooks
Paul Jones
by Hutchins Hapgood
The Spirit of the Ghetto: Studies of the Jewish Quarter in New York
by Hutchins Hapgood
The Story of a Lover
by Hutchins Hapgood
The Autobiography of a Thief
by Hutchins Hapgood
An Anarchist Woman
by Hutchins Hapgood
About the author
Born in Chicago in 1869 and raised in Alton, Illinois, Hutchins Hapgood studied at the University of Michigan and then Harvard, graduating in 1892. He went on to become an American journalist, critic, and author who was especially interested in urban life, radical politics, immigrants, and artistic outsiders.
Much of his writing grew out of firsthand reporting. He contributed to newspapers including the New York Commercial Advertiser and the New York Evening Post, and he became known for books such as The Spirit of the Ghetto, An Anarchist Woman, and The Autobiography of a Thief. Rather than keeping his subjects at a distance, he often tried to understand how people on the social margins actually lived and thought.
Hapgood was also part of the wider bohemian and reform circles of his day. He was married to writer Neith Boyce, and together they were associated with the early modern cultural world centered in New York and Provincetown. He died in 1944, leaving behind work that offers a lively window into American social and literary life in a time of change.