James Gould Cozzens - Biographical Background

Biographical Background

Born in Chicago, Illinois, he grew up on Staten Island. His father, Henry William Cozzens Jr., who died when Cozzens was 17, was an affluent businessman and the grandson of a governor of Rhode Island, William C. Cozzens. His Canadian mother, Mary Bertha Wood, came from a family of Connecticut tories who left for Nova Scotia following the American Revolution. Cozzens grew up in the same privileged lifestyle that formed the background of his most acclaimed works.

An Episcopalian, Cozzens attended the Episcopal Kent School in Connecticut from 1916 to 1922, and after graduation went to Harvard University for two years, where he published his first novel, Confusion, in 1924. A few months later, ill and in debt, he withdrew from school and moved to New Brunswick, where he wrote a second novel, Michael Scarlett. Neither book sold well nor was widely read, and to sustain himself, Cozzens went to Cuba to teach children of American residents, and there began to write short stories and gather material, which eventually became Cock Pit (1928) and The Son of Perdition (1929). After a year he accompanied his mother to Europe, where he tutored a young polio victim in order to earn money.

He met Sylvia Bernice Baumgarten, a literary agent with Brandt & Kirkpatrick, whom he married at city hall in New York City on December 27, 1927, and who successfully edited and marketed his books. She was his apparent antithesis — Jewish and a liberal Democrat — but their marriage lasted successfully until both died in 1978. Except for military service during World War II, the Cozzenses lived in semi-seclusion near Lambertville, New Jersey and shied away from all but local contact. Other early novels include S.S. San Pedro (1931), The Last Adam (1933), and Castaway (1934).

Cozzens received O. Henry Awards for his short stories "A Farewell to Cuba" (1931) and "Total Stranger", published in The Saturday Evening Post on February 15, 1936, then went on to author two more highly regarded novels, Ask Me Tomorrow (1941), and The Just and the Unjust (1942).

During World War II, Cozzens served in the U.S. Army Air Forces, at first updating manuals, then in the USAAF Office of Information Services, a liaison and "information clearinghouse" between the military and the civilian press. One of the functions of his office was in controlling news, and it became Cozzens’ job to defuse situations potentially embarrassing to the Chief of the Army Air Forces, Gen. Henry H. Arnold. In the course of his job he became arguably the best informed officer of any rank and service in the nation, and achieved the rank of major by the end of the war. These experiences formed the basis of his 1948 novel Guard of Honor, which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize.

His 1957 novel By Love Possessed became a surprise runaway hit, with 34 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, reaching Number One on September 22, 1957, three weeks after its release. (It was also the top-selling novel of 1957. See List of 1957 bestsellers.) The novel was also very loosely adapted into a film in 1961 starring Lana Turner.

In 1958, he relocated to another country home near Williamstown, Massachusetts. From 1960 to 1966 Cozzens was on the Harvard Board of Overseers' Visiting Committee for the English Department. His last novel, Morning, Noon and Night, was published in 1968 but sold poorly.

James and Bernice Cozzens spent their last years in relative obscurity in Martin County, Florida, where they lived in Rio, but used a Stuart post office box as their address. She died on January 30, 1978. Suffering from spinal cancer, he died of pneumonia on August 9, 1978, at Martin Memorial Hospital in Stuart.