Margaret Widdemer was a U.S. poet and novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

The Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...

 (known then as the Columbia University Prize) in 1919 for her collection The Old Road to Paradise, sharing the prize with Carl Sandburg, who won for his collection Corn Huskers.

Biography

Margaret Widdemer was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Asbury Park, New Jersey, where her father, Howard T. Widdemer, was a minister of the First Congregational Church. She graduated from the Drexel Institute Library School in 1909. She first came to public attention with her poem The Factories, which treated the subject of child labor. In 1919 she married Robert Haven Schauffler

Robert Haven Schauffler

Robert Haven Schauffler was an American writer, cellist and war hero. Schauffler published poetry, biographies of Beethoven, Brahms, and Schumann and a series of books celebrating American holidays.-Biography:...

 (1879–1964), a widower five years her senior. Schauffler was an author and cellist who published widely on poetry, travel, culture, and music. His papers are held at the University of Texas at Austin.

Widdemer's memoir Golden Years I Had recounts her friendships with emiment authors such as Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

, F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...

, T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

, Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder

Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...

, and Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet, playwright and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and was known for her activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work...

.
Widdemer's essay in the 1933 Review of Literature, "Message and Middlebrow," popularized the term "middlebrow."

Poetry collections

• The Factories and Other Poems (1917)
• The Old Road to Paradise (1918)
• Cross Currents (1921)
• Little Girl and Boy Land (1924)
• Ballads and Lyrics (1925)
• Collected Poems (1928) jjjj
• The Road to Downderry (1931)
• Hill Garden (1937)
• Dark Cavalier (1958)

Adult fiction

• The Rose-Garden Husband (1915) (made into the 1917 film A Wife on Trial)
• Why Not? (1916) (made into the 1918 film A Dream Lady)
• The Wishing Ring Man(1919)
• The Boardwalk (1919)
• I’ve Married Marjorie (1920)
• The Boardwalk (1920)
• The Year of Delight (1921)
• A Minister of Grace (1922)
• Graven Image (1923)
• Charis Sees It Through (1924)
• Gallant Lady (1926)
• More Than Wife (1927)
• Loyal Lover (1929)
• Rhinestones (1929)
• All the King's Horses (1930)
• The Truth About Lovers (1931)
• The Pre-War Lady (1932)
• The Years of Love (1933)
• Golden Rain (1933)
• The Other Lovers (1934)
• Eve's Orchard (1935)
• Back to Virtue, Betty (1935)
• Songs for a Christmas Tree (1935)
• This Isn’t the End (1936)
• The Singing Wood (1936)
• Marriage is Possible (1936)
• Ladies Go Masked (1939)
• Hand on Her Shoulder (1939)
• She Knew Three Brothers (1939)
• Someday I'll Find You (1940)
• Lover's Alibi (1941)
• Angela Comes Home (1942)
• Constancia Herself (1945)
• Let Me Have Wings (1945)
• Lani (1949)
• Red Cloak Flying (1950)
• Lady of the Mohawks (1951)
• The Golden Wildcat (1957)
• Buckskin Baronet (1960)
• The Red Castle Women (1968)

Children's fiction

• Winona of the Camp Fire (1915)
• Winona of Camp Karonya (1917)
• You're Only Young Once (1918)
• Winona's War Farm (1918)
• Winona's Way (1919)
• Winona on her Own (1922)
• Winona's Dreams Come True (1923)
• Binkie and the Bell Dolls (1923)
• Marcia's Farmhouse (1939)

Memoir

• Golden Friends I Had (1964)
• Summers at the Colony (1964)
• Jessie Rittenhouse: A Centenary Memoir-Anthology (1969)

External links

• A Celebration of Women Writers: The Old Road to Paradise by Margaret Widdemer