Catherine Drinker Bowen (January 1, 1897 – November 1, 1973) was an American writer best known for her
biographies
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curri ...
. She won the
National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1958.
Biography
Bowen was born Catherine Drinker on the
Haverford College
Haverford College ( ) is a private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Fr ...
campus in
Haverford, Pennsylvania, on January 1, 1897, to a prominent
Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...
family. She was an accomplished
violin
The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...
ist who studied for a musical career at the
Peabody Institute
The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University is a Private university, private music and dance music school, conservatory and College-preparatory school, preparatory school in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1857, it became affiliat ...
and the
Juilliard School of Music, but ultimately decided to become a writer. She had no formal writing education and no academic career, but became a
bestselling American biographer and writer despite criticism from academics. Her earliest biographies were about musicians. Bowen did all her own research, without hiring research assistants, and sometimes took the controversial step of interviewing subjects without taking notes. A number of Bowen's books were chosen as
Book of the Month Club selections, including ''Beloved Friend'' (1937), ''Yankee from Olympus'' (1944) and ''John Adams and the American Revolution'' (1950).
In 1958, she won the U.S.
National Book Award for Nonfiction["National Book Awards – 1958"]
National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-19.
(With acceptance speech by Drinker Bowen.) for ''The Lion and the Throne: The Life and Times of
Sir Edward Coke'' (1552–1634), a biography of the prominent lawyer of
Elizabethan England. That same year, she was elected to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...
. In addition, Ms. Bowen received the 1957 Philadelphia Award and the 1962 Women's National Book Association award. Her last book, ''Family Portrait'', received critical acclaim, and was a
Literary Guild
The Literary Guild of America is a mail order book sales club, book club selling low-cost editions of selected current books to its members. Established in 1927 to compete with the Book of the Month Club, it is currently owned by Bookspan. It was a ...
selection. During her lifetime, she was the recipient of numerous awards, including
the Philadelphia Award. In 1962, she became the first woman to receive an honorary degree from
Lehigh University
Lehigh University (LU), in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States, is a private university, private research university. The university was established in 1865 by businessman Asa Packer. Lehigh University's undergraduate programs have been mixed ...
.
Bowen was an active amateur chamber music player, often playing violin with members of her family and with friends. She recorded her experiences playing chamber music in her book ''Friends and Fiddlers''. She was one of the founding members of the Amateur Chamber Music Players (today
Associated Chamber Music Players), an international organization encouraging amateur music-making.
At the time of Bowen's death in 1973, she was working on a biography of
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...
; the unfinished book was published posthumously as ''Scenes from the Life'' of its subject. She died in Haverford and is buried in
West Laurel Hill Cemetery in
Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
Bala Cynwyd ( ) is a community and census-designated place in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located on the Philadelphia Main Line in Southeastern Pennsylvania and borders the western edge of Philadelphia at U.S. Route ...
.
Family
Catherine was the daughter of
Henry Sturgis Drinker, who later became president of
Lehigh University
Lehigh University (LU), in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States, is a private university, private research university. The university was established in 1865 by businessman Asa Packer. Lehigh University's undergraduate programs have been mixed ...
. She had four brothers,
Henry ("Harry"), an attorney who lent his name to the large Philadelphia-based law firm
Drinker Biddle & Reath (now Faegre Drinker), and who was also a
chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of Musical instrument, instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a Great chamber, palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music ...
composer and conductor; Jim;
Cecil, the founder of the
Harvard School of Public Health; and
Philip
Philip, also Phillip, is a male name derived from the Macedonian Old Koine language, Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominen ...
, inventor of the
iron lung; and a sister, Ernesta. Catherine's aunt on her father's side was artist
Catherine Ann Drinker and on her mother's side noted portraitist
Cecilia Beaux
Eliza Cecilia Beaux (May 1, 1855 – September 17, 1942) was an American artist and the first woman to teach art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Known for her elegant and sensitive portraits of friends, relatives, and Gilded Age p ...
.
Catherine Drinker married Ezra Bowen, the Chair of Economics at
Lehigh University
Lehigh University (LU), in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States, is a private university, private research university. The university was established in 1865 by businessman Asa Packer. Lehigh University's undergraduate programs have been mixed ...
and the author of ''Social Economics'' in 1919. They divorced in the 1930s. Catherine married her second husband, Thomas McKean Downs, a surgeon, in 1939. She had two children from her first marriage: Catherine Prince and Ezra Bowen. Ezra went on to become a writer and editor for
Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with a circulation of over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellen ...
and
Time Life. One of her two biological grandsons, Matthew, is an author of creative non-fiction, stage / screenplays, and scholarly articles germane to his field of neuropsychology.
Selected works
* ''The Story of the Oak Tree'' (Easton, PA: Chemical Publishing Co., 1924)
* ''A History of Lehigh University'' (South Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh Alumni Bulletin, 1924)
* ''Rufus Starbuck's Wife'' (New York: Putnam, 1932)
* ''Friends and Fiddlers'' (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1935)
* ''Beloved Friend: The Story of Tchaikowsky and Nadejda Von Meck'' (New York: Random House, 1937)
* ''Free artist: The story of Anton and Nicholas Rubinstein'' (New York: Random House, 1939)
* ''Yankee from Olympus: Justice
Holmes and His Family'' (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1944)
* ''
John Adams
John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before Presidency of John Adams, his presidency, he was a leader of ...
and the American Revolution'' (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1950)
* ''The writing of biography'' (Boston: 1951)
* ''The Lion and the Throne: The Life and Times of
Sir Edward Coke'' (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1957)
* ''Lord of the Law'' (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1957)
* ''Adventures of a Biographer'' (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1959)
* ''
Bernard DeVoto: Historian, critic, and fighter'' (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1960)
* ''
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of nat ...
: The Temper of a Man'' (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963)
* ''
Miracle at Philadelphia'': The Story of the
Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966), which is #54 on list of books in the most number of American Libraries
* ''Biography: The Craft and the Calling'' (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1968)
* ''Family Portrait'' (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970)
* ''The Most Dangerous Man in America: Scenes from the Life of
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...
'' (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1974)
References
Giffuni, Cathe. "Catherine Drinker Bowen: A Bibliography," Bulletin of Bibliography, Vol. 50 No. 4 December 1993, pp. 331–337.
External links
Finding Aid for the Catherine Drinker Bowen Papers Library of Congress
Biography at West Laurel Hill Cemetery web site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bowen, Catherine Drinker
1897 births
1973 deaths
20th-century American biographers
American women biographers
National Book Award winners
Writers from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
American Quakers
Burials at West Laurel Hill Cemetery
20th-century American violinists
20th-century American women writers
Drinker family
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Members of the American Philosophical Society