M. A. De Wolfe (Mark Antony De Wolfe) Howe

Born in Bristol, Rhode Island, in 1864, he studied at Lehigh University and then at Harvard, where he earned a master’s degree in English. He went on to hold editorial roles at The Youth’s Companion and The Atlantic Monthly, building a career that joined close literary scholarship with a gift for clear, accessible writing.

He became known as one of America’s notable editors and biographers, contributing to projects such as the Beacon Biographies series and writing books on figures including George Bancroft, James Ford Rhodes, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. His Barrett Wendell and His Letters won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1925, and his Boston: the Place and the People remains one of the best-known examples of his deep engagement with the city’s history and culture.

Although his roots were in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, he spent most of his adult life in the Boston area and was often described as a central figure in its literary world. He continued writing despite serious eyesight problems and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1960, after a long life devoted to books, history, and biography.