Ernest Poole (1880 – 1950)

novelist.

He was born in Chicago, Illinois on 23 Jan 1880, and graduated from Princeton University in 1902. He worked as a journalist and was active in promoting social reforms including the ending of child labor.

He was a correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post in Europe before and during World War I.

His novel The Harbor has remained the work he is most well-known for. It presents a strong socialist message, set in the industrial Brooklyn waterfront. It is considered one of the first fictional works to offer a positive view of unions.

His portrait of a New York family titled His Family made him the first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1918.

In 1917, for The New Republic magazine he went to Russia to report on the Russian Revolution.

He died in Franconia, NH on 10 Jan 1950.