Document Type

Book

Publication Date

1983

Abstract

If the pen is mightier than the sword, Maxwell Struthers Burt was a stalwart warrior. Poet, essayist, novelist, short story writer, librettist, reviewer, author of a literary manifesto, contributor to letter-to-the-editor columns, and personal letter writer, Burt seems never to have stopped writing over a career of a half-century. His principal publisher was Charles Scribner’s Sons, which, under the editorial leadership of Maxwell Perkins, published the work of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and a variety of other respected writers. Burt’s articles, essays, poems, and stories appeared in many of the most successful magazines in America: Scribner's Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, The Red Book Magazine, Ladies’ Home Journal, and The North American Review. He wrote scores of reviews for such publications as The Saturday Review of Literature, the New York Times, and the Philadelphia Record. Untiringly, Burt sent his views to the editors of far-flung newspapers: the Jackson's Hole Courier, the St. Petersburg Times, the Princeton Alumni Weekly, and the New York Herald Tribune. The “Most Unforgettable Character” he had ever met. an old-time cowboy named Cal Carrington, was the subject of Burt’s article in The Reader’s Digest. When totalitarianism threatened the writers’ freedom in 1941, Burt wrote and circulated the American Authors’ Manifesto, which was signed by one hundred writers, including E. B. White, Frank Waters, Floyd Dell, and Max Lerner. The Best Short Stories of 1915 honored Burt’s “The Water-Hole,” and his fine story “Each in His Generation” won first prize in the 0. Henry Memorial Award competition in 1920. Respected, frequently praised, and widely read in the 1920s and 1930s, Burt, the stalwart warrior, is today a forgotten soldier.

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