author
Mervin James Curl
1883–1955
Best remembered for a practical early-20th-century guide to clear nonfiction prose, this American teacher wrote with a steady focus on explanation, structure, and useful advice for students. His work still feels surprisingly direct and readable today.
1 Audiobook
Expository Writing
by Mervin James Curl
About the author
Mervin James Curl was an American writer and teacher best known for Expository Writing, a rhetoric handbook first published in 1919. The book presents him as a former instructor in English at the University of Illinois, and it was published by Houghton Mifflin in Boston, New York, and Chicago.
The front matter of Expository Writing suggests a life closely connected to teaching. Curl dedicated the book to students in Rhetoric III at the University of Illinois and thanked a number of faculty colleagues for their help, which gives a sense of him as a classroom-minded author interested in making writing clearer and more teachable.
Reliable biographical details beyond those basics are scarce in the sources I found. Genealogy-style records associated with his name indicate that he was born in 1883 and died in 1955, and a memorial for his wife Grace Voris Brown Curl states that they married in 1919 and that he died in 1955. I couldn't confirm a suitable verified portrait from the sources available, so no profile image is included.