Biography
Chancellor was born in Dayton, Ohio. After graduating from Amherst College, he went into teaching. In 1906 he was the superintendent of schools of Paterson, New Jersey. He wrote prolifically, publishing around 40 books and hundreds of articles between 1904 and 1920. He married into the family of Harriet Beecher Stowe. He was a Democrat.
When Chancellor was a professor at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, he began to research the background of Republican candidate Warren G. Harding. He wrote two pamphlets about this subject prior to the 1920 presidential election, unleashing a major scandal as he alleged Harding was of mixed-race descent. The college dismissed Chancellor from his post four days before the election. Copies of Chancellor's pamphlets were confiscated by federal agents and destroyed; only five are thought to be in existence, three of which are owned by rare book collectors, the other two owned by museums.
Read more about this topic: William Estabrook Chancellor
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)