Marquand, << mahr KWAHND, >> John Phillips (1893-1960), an American novelist, pictured the decayed aristocratic society in Boston with gentle but effective satire. He won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Late George Apley (1937). This, and Wickford Point (1939), H. M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), and Point of No Return (1949) are usually considered his best works. They show how the inheritors of wealth conform to old customs without understanding the duties of a new age.
Marquand was born on Nov. 10, 1893, in Wilmington, Delaware. After graduating from Harvard University, he became a reporter for the Boston Transcript. Marquand won his first success as an author with romantic novels and with serialized detective stories about Mr. Moto, a secret agent. Thirty Years (1954) contains essays and reports on Marquand’s own observations. He died on July 11, 1960.
