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Edward Alden Jewell (March 10, 1888 – October 11, 1947) was an American newspaper and magazine editor, art critic and novelist. He was the New York Times art editor from July 1936 until his death.

Early life

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, E. A. Jewell was the eldest of four children born to Frank Jewell and Jenny Agnes Osterhout. After attending high school in Grand Rapids, Jewell studied at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. Between the ages of 8 and 22, Jewell displayed intense interest in the theatre and acting, and toured for a time with the Kansas City-based stage actor Louis James.

Career

After studying abroad in 1910 and 1911, Jewell worked as a reporter and later drama critic at the Grand Rapids Herald, a paper whose then-proprietor was his uncle, Senator William Alden Smith, to whom Jewell later served as secretary in 1914 and 1915.

In 1915, Jewell worked briefly at The New York Tribune before becoming managing editor of the World Court Magazine the following year. in 1916 and 1917, he was an associate editor at Everybody's Magazine before returning to the Tribune as Sunday editor.

Jewell's first novel, The Charmed Circle, was evidently well regarded, receiving favorable reviews from Carl Van Doren in Bookman and H. W. Boynton in The Independent.

Beginning in 1925, Jewell was employed as both an editor and contributor by The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and in 1928 became the assistant to the Times art critic Elisabeth Luther Cary. Jewell succeeded Cary in that role at the time of her death in 1936.

Death

After being stricken by an undisclosed illness on the night of October 11, 1947, Jewell died while being transported from his East 55th Street Manhattan address to Metropolitan Hospital on Roosevelt Island. He was survived by former wife Manette Lansing Carpenter and their daughter Marcia, both then living in California. As per his instructions, there was no funeral and Jewell's remains were cremated at the Fresh Pond Crematory in Queens.

Works

Fiction

Novels

• The Charmed Circle: A Comedy (1921)
• The White Kami: A Novel (1922)
• The Moth Decides: A Novel (1922)

Short stories

• "Night-Letter to Louisville", The Century Magazine, April 1923; Vol. 105, No. 6, pp. 833–846
• "Their Little Point of Honor; An American Story", World Fiction, October 1922, pp. 111–120

Non-fiction

Books

• Have We an American Art?. New York: Longmans, Green & Company. 1939.

Articles

• "The Future for Poetry in America: An Interview with Amy Lowell". The Editor. January 15, 1916. Vol. 43, No. 2. pp. 65–68
• "A Philosophy Close to the Earth". The World Court, A Magazine of International Progress, Volume 1. January 1916, Vol. 1, No. 6., pp. 280–281
• "Japan's Tremendous Mistake". National Magazine. July, 1916. Vol. XLIV, No. 4. pp. 644–646
• "The Lost Japan". The Nation. September 19, 1923. Vol. 117, No. 3037, pp. 287–289

References

1. ^ "Edward Alden Jewell, Art Critic, Is Dead; New York Times Writer, 59, Stricken In His Home Here—Author of Novels". The New York Times. October 12, 1947. p. 76. ProQuest 108062740.
2. ^ "New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949", database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2WYW-Q6B : 3 June 2020), Edward Alden Jewell, 1947.
3. "Obituaries: Edward Alden Jewell, New York Times Critic". New York Daily News.
4. "Michigan Marriages, 1868-1925," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N3L4-BHY : 18 February 2021), Ira B. Dalrymple and Agnes Jewell, 4 Nov 1913; citing Marriage, Grand Rapids, Kent, Michigan, , Citing Secretary of State, Department of Vital Records, Lansing; FHL microfilm 4209234.
5. "California, County Marriages, 1850-1952", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K8FN-NZJ : 17 August 2022), Foster Jewell and Rhoda Adelaide Snyder, 1937.
6. "Michigan Marriages, 1868-1925," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NQ9H-2MM : 18 February 2021), Donald Clark Jewell and Dorothy Jeanette Collier, 30 Nov 1922; citing Marriage, Muskegon, Muskegon, Michigan, , Citing Secretary of State, Department of Vital Records, Lansing; FHL microfilm 4032401.
7. Jewell, Edward Alden (October 1922). "Their Little Point of Honor; An American Story", World Fiction, October 1922, pp. 111.
8. "Hears Last Call". The Daily Colonist. March 6, 1910. p. 1.
9. Van Doren, Carl. "A Shelf of Recent Books: Young and in Paris!". The Bookman. December 1921, Vol. LIV, No. 4. pp. 382–383
10. Boynton, H. W. (November 12, 1921). "A Delightful Comedy". The Independent and the Weekly Review. p. 169. ProQuest 90535025. It is not the style of a stylist which attracts one here, but the quality of a writer with that rarest of endowments, the Comic Spirit.
11. "Edward Alden Jewell". The New York Times. October 15, 1947. p. 27. ProQuest 108056189. In accordance with the previously held wish of Mr. Jewell, no funeral service will be held. The body will be cremated today at the Fresh Ponds Crematory, Middle Village, Queens.

Further reading

• "Mrs. Steadman and Infant Home from Mills". San Mateo Times. May 27, 1943.
• "Art Gallery for Palm Springs Will Be Ready in Fall". Desert Sun. April 5, 1946. p. 25.

External links

• Edward Alden Jewell at IMDb
• Works by Edward Alden Jewell at Project Gutenberg

• 1888 births
• 1947 deaths
• American art critics
• 20th-century American novelists
• Writers from Grand Rapids, Michigan
• The New York Times journalists
• New-York Tribune people
• American journalists
• American male novelists