Margaret Widdemer - The Old Road to Paradise: He must have been delightful, she said, when he was alive!

Margaret Widdemer was born on September 30th, 1884 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Asbury Park, New Jersey. She graduated from the Drexel Institute Library School in 1909.

Margaret first gained recognition with her poem ‘The Factories’, and its subject of child labor.

In 1919, she married Robert Haven Schauffler, a widower five years her senior who was an author and cellist and published widely on poetry, travel, culture, and music.

That same year she won the Pulitzer Prize (then still known as the Columbia University Prize) for this collection ‘The Old Road to Paradise’. The award was shared with Carl Sandburg for ‘Cornhuskers’.

Margaret’s career was long and prolific covering poetry, adult and children’s fiction and some self-help guidance books. Her friendships covered such authors as Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Thornton Wilder, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Margaret Widdemer died in New York City, on July 14th, 1978.