Logan Marshall

Who is Logan Marshall?

Logan Marshall, was the pen name of Logan Howard-Smith of Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Howard-Smith was the son of Robert Spurrier and Elizabeth Howard-Smith. The father was an executive of Link-Belt.

Howard-Smith attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1905. Upon graduation he took a position as assistant editor at The John C. Winston Co., a publishing firm. Winston was later acquired by Henry Holt and became part of Holt, Rinehart & Winston. At Winston, Howard-Smith both edited and wrote a large number of books, mainly under the pen name Logan Marshall. These were often quickly produced and designed to satisfy public curiosity concerning a current event. As a result, Howard-Smith has been characterized as a "hack", and his language criticized as "strained, excessive, or melodramatic." Howard-Smith's The Sinking of the Titanic, however, achieved a great deal of fame as a result of being quickly at the market, and continues to be cited in bibliographies about the incident.