Ernest Poole

Who was Ernest Poole?

Ernest Cook Poole was an American novelist.

He was born in Chicago, Illinois on January 23, 1880, and graduated from Princeton University during 1902. He worked as a journalist and was active in promoting social reforms including the ending of child labor. He was a correspondent for the American magazine The Saturday Evening Post in Europe before and during World War I. His novel The Harbor is the work for which he is known best. It is set largely among the proletariat of the industrial Brooklyn waterfront, and is sympathetic with socialism. It is considered one of the first American fictional works to present a positive opinion of trade unions.

During 1917, for the magazine The New Republic he went to Russia to report on the Russian Revolution. Also during the war, he was employed by the Committee on Public Information.

His novel named His Family, concerning a New York family, made him the first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. According to one commentator: "The consensus is that it's the lesser of the two works, that the Pulitzer committee was really honoring Poole for The Harbor".