John P. Marquand
Encyclopedia
John Phillips Marquand was a American writer. Originally best known for his Mr. Moto
spy stories, he achieved popular success and critical respect for his satirical novels, winning a Pulitzer Prize for The Late George Apley
in 1938. One of his abiding themes was the confining nature of life in America's upper class and among those who aspired to join it. Marquand treated those whose lives were bound by these unwritten codes with a characteristic mix of respect and satire
.
and a cousin of Buckminster Fuller
, who gained fame in the 20th century as the inventor of the geodesic dome
. Marquand was born in Wilmington, Delaware
, and grew up in the New York suburbs. When financial reverses broke up the family's comfortable household, he was sent to Newburyport, Massachusetts
, where he was raised by his eccentric aunts, who lived in a crumbling Federal Period mansion, surrounded by remnants of the family's vanished glory. (Marquand's ancestors had been successful merchants in the Revolutionary period; Margaret Fuller and other aunts had been actively involved with the Transcendentalist and Abolitionist movements.)
Marquand attended Newburyport High School
, where he won a scholarship that enabled him to attend Harvard. As an impecunious public school graduate in the heyday of Harvard's "Gold Coast," he was an unclubbable outsider. Though turned down by the college newspaper, the Harvard Crimson
, Marquand succeeded in being elected to the editorial board of the humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon
. After graduating from Harvard College
in 1915, Marquand was hired by The Boston Evening Transcript
, working initially as a reporter and later on the Transcript's bi-weekly magazine section. magazine.
Like many of his classmates, he served in the First World War. While he was a student at Harvard, Marquand joined Battery A of the Massachusetts National Guard, in 1916 this unit was activated and in July 1916 Marquand was sent to the Mexican border.
editor Ellery Sedgwick
(The Sedgwicks were a prominent and well-connected family; The Atlantic Monthly was one of the country's most prestigious periodicals). In 1925, Marquand published his first important book, Lord Timothy Dexter, an exploration of the life and legend of eighteenth century Newburyport eccentric Timothy Dexter
(1763–1806).
By the mid-1930s he was a prolific and successful writer of fiction for slick magazines like the Saturday Evening Post; during this period Marquand began producing a series of novels on the dilemmas of class, most centered on New England. The first of these, The Late George Apley
(1937), a satire of Boston's upper class, won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1938. Other Marquand novels exploring New England and class themes include Wickford Point (1939), H.M. Pulham, Esquire (1941), and Point of No Return (1949). The last is especially notable for its satirical portrayal of Harvard anthropologist W. Lloyd Warner
, whose Yankee City study attempted (and in Marquand's view, dismally failed) to describe and analyze the manners and mores of Marquand's Newburyport.
. The first, Your Turn, Mr. Moto appeared in 1935; the last, Right You Are, Mr. Moto, in 1957. The series inspired eight films, starring Peter Lorre
, which are only very loosely based on the novels. James S. Koga states that Moto is not a proper Japanese surname. He notes that "[Mr. Moto] is never the main protagonist of the story—rather he appears at strategic points in the story, a catalyst for action." "The typical storyline", he says, "involves an American male, somewhat tarnished by past experiences in the U.S., who finds himself in the Orient ... overwhelmed by the foreignness of Asia. This protagonist gets involved in some international intrigue by happenstance, usually coinciding with meeting Mr. Moto, ... falls deeper into the plot and then finds himself in deadly peril. Along the way, he meets an attractive American woman who also becomes entangled, and by resourcefulness (and not a little help from Mr. Moto) overcomes the peril and then gets the girl."
Numerous Marquand novels became Hollywood films, but several bore little resemblance to the books. Mr. Moto, a tough-minded spy in Marquand's novels, became a genial police agent in the Peter Lorre films of the 1930s. The final Mr. Moto novel, in the 1950s, was filmed as a spy story, but Moto's character was eliminated.
Marquand's 1951 novel, Melville Goodwin, USA, was unrecognizable in the 1958 motion picture A Top-Secret Affair. The book was a satire about publicists trying to cover up a general's adultery, but movie writers transformed the general into a bachelor. According to Marquand's biographers, he took these Hollywood liberties in stride.
In his later years, Marquand also contributed an occasional satiric short story to Sports Illustrated
. A collection was later published as a book, with the title Life at Happy Knoll. The stories humorously dealt with the problems of an "old-line" country club as it tried to adjust to changing times and a competing "upstart" country club located nearby.
Other novels
, University).
Through his second marriage to Adelaide Ferry Hooker, he became linked to the Rockefeller family (her sister, Blanchette, was married to John D. Rockefeller III). He maintained luxury homes in Newburyport and in the Caribbean.
(and with a lighter touch), Marquand addressed issue of privilege and inequality. Marquand's financial success and seeming veneration for the upper classes, like O'Hara's, was sufficient to cause academia to ignore him. Marquand was unsparing in his own scorn for academics, notably in Point of No Return (in which he lampoons anthropologist W. Lloyd Warner
) and Wickford Point (in which he mocks a prominent member of Harvard's English Department).
Although currently in eclipse, Marquand's reputation may be poised for a revival. Jonathan Yardley, in a 2003 Washington Post
column, says Marquand's contemporaries "found [his] satires of that world both hilarious and accurate, and so do I. That Marquand has almost vanished from the literary landscape is to me an unfathomable mystery. From ... 1937 ... until 1960, Marquand was one of the most popular novelists in the country. The literati turned up their noses at him (as they do to this day) because he had done a fair amount of hackwork in his early career and continued to write, unashamedly, for popular magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post."
Critic Martha Spaulding, writing in The Atlantic Monthly in 2004, noted that "in his day Marquand was compared to Sinclair Lewis and John O'Hara, and his social portrait of twentieth-century America was likened to Balzac's Comédie Humaine, [but] critics rarely took him very seriously. Throughout his career he believed, resentfully, that their lack of regard stemmed from his early success in the "slicks". Praising his "seductive, sonorous prose", she states that he "deserves to be rediscovered."
Marquand wrote the blurb on Witness by Whittaker Chambers
for the Book of the Month Club
in 1952.
in October 1935 for less than $5,000.(perhaps because the water supply was unreliable and the home required renovation). However, by the year of his death, his home at Kent's Island had been transformed into a rambling mansion by Marquand and his second wife. The couple had made numerous additions to the original structure which held a collection of museum-quality antiques and family heirlooms; including a Gilbert Stuart
portrait of a Marquand ancestor, as well as a silver tray fashioned by Paul Revere
.
Marquand expressed concern for the future of his estate shortly before his death. In Marquand", biographer Millicent Bell, wrote: "He wondered what would happen to Kent's Island when he died; he willed it to his three younger children but foresaw a time when they might not want it and imagined it enduring [...] under the protection of a preservation agency."
Marquand's concern was not unfounded. The children sold the vast property in April 1974 for $305,000 to Massachusetts.
The state maintained the mansion and kept a state police trooper there as a caretaker until 1978 when the well finally went dry. After the well dried and the home became vacant it deteriorated rapidly. By 1984, the mansion was in poor condition due to vandalism and exposure to the elements.
During 1984, a ten-year-old boy named Jeffrey Noonan wrote a letter to then-Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis
asking that action be taken in order to begin efforts to restore the home. His letter was answered by the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. The letter effectively informed the child that there were plans to raze the building. He took the letter, pedaled a bicycle to the office of the Newburyport Daily News and asked to see the editor. The newspaper interviewed and photographed the child for a front-page story. This started a local interest in the cause to save the home of the Pulitzer Prize winner from destruction.
Newburyport Magazine re-visited the story in its Fall, 2008 edition and interviewed Jeffrey Noonan (aka Jeffrey Justice) for the article. Discussing the youth's tenacity, the writer mentioned that the state was ready to pursue the demolition by 1984. "But they hadn't reckoned with Jeffrey. The fifth-grader kept up a barrage of publicity-- more newspaper stories and an interview on a Boston
TV station. He went to the State House to talk to legislators."
The article also allowed for a broader understanding of the nature of the opposition: "There was a backlash, too. Noonan- now a 34-year old licensed psychic who goes by the name Jeffrey Justice-- recalls an angry telephone call, possibly fueled by alcohol, from a woman who had worked for Marquand, and other comments from older Newburyporters who hadn't approved of the novelist's sometimes messy personal life."
In 1989, John Marquand's Kent's Island home was ultimately torn down. A visit to the island today is discouraging, as there seems to be no trace of the big house or ruins of any of the smaller buildings present.
Mr. Moto
Mr. Moto is a fictional Japanese secret agent created by the American author John P. Marquand. He appeared in six novels by Marquand published between 1935 and 1957. Marquand initially created the character for the Saturday Evening Post, which was seeking stories with an Asian hero after the death...
spy stories, he achieved popular success and critical respect for his satirical novels, winning a Pulitzer Prize for The Late George Apley
The Late George Apley
The Late George Apley is a 1937 novel by John Phillips Marquand. It is a satire of Boston's upper class. The title character is a Harvard-educated WASP living on Beacon Hill in downtown Boston....
in 1938. One of his abiding themes was the confining nature of life in America's upper class and among those who aspired to join it. Marquand treated those whose lives were bound by these unwritten codes with a characteristic mix of respect and satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
.
Youth and early adulthood
Marquand was a scion of an old Newburyport, Massachusetts, family. He was a great-nephew of 19th-century writer Margaret FullerMargaret Fuller
Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, commonly known as Margaret Fuller, was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism...
and a cousin of Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....
, who gained fame in the 20th century as the inventor of the geodesic dome
Geodesic dome
A geodesic dome is a spherical or partial-spherical shell structure or lattice shell based on a network of great circles on the surface of a sphere. The geodesics intersect to form triangular elements that have local triangular rigidity and also distribute the stress across the structure. When...
. Marquand was born in Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington is the largest city in the state of Delaware, United States, and is located at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley...
, and grew up in the New York suburbs. When financial reverses broke up the family's comfortable household, he was sent to Newburyport, Massachusetts
Newburyport, Massachusetts
Newburyport is a small coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, 35 miles northeast of Boston. The population was 21,189 at the 2000 census. A historic seaport with a vibrant tourism industry, Newburyport includes part of Plum Island...
, where he was raised by his eccentric aunts, who lived in a crumbling Federal Period mansion, surrounded by remnants of the family's vanished glory. (Marquand's ancestors had been successful merchants in the Revolutionary period; Margaret Fuller and other aunts had been actively involved with the Transcendentalist and Abolitionist movements.)
Marquand attended Newburyport High School
Newburyport High School
Newburyport High School is a public high school serving students in ninth through twelfth grades in Newburyport, Massachusetts and is part of the Newburyport Public School System...
, where he won a scholarship that enabled him to attend Harvard. As an impecunious public school graduate in the heyday of Harvard's "Gold Coast," he was an unclubbable outsider. Though turned down by the college newspaper, the Harvard Crimson
Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson are the athletic teams of Harvard University. The school's teams compete in NCAA Division I. As of 2006, there were 41 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than at any other NCAA Division I college in the country...
, Marquand succeeded in being elected to the editorial board of the humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon
Harvard Lampoon
The Harvard Lampoon is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.-Overview:Published since 1876, The Harvard Lampoon is the world's longest continually published humor magazine. It is also the second longest-running English-language humor...
. After graduating from Harvard College
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1915, Marquand was hired by The Boston Evening Transcript
Boston Evening Transcript
The Boston Evening Transcript was a daily afternoon newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts, published from July 24, 1830, to April 30, 1941.-Beginnings:...
, working initially as a reporter and later on the Transcript's bi-weekly magazine section. magazine.
Like many of his classmates, he served in the First World War. While he was a student at Harvard, Marquand joined Battery A of the Massachusetts National Guard, in 1916 this unit was activated and in July 1916 Marquand was sent to the Mexican border.
Sociological themes
Marquand's life and work reflected his ambivalence about American society—and, in particular, the power of its old line elites. Being rebuffed by fashionable Harvard did not discourage his social aspirations. In 1922, he married Christina Sedgwick, niece of The Atlantic MonthlyThe Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...
editor Ellery Sedgwick
Ellery Sedgwick
Ellery Sedgwick was an American editor, brother of Henry Dwight Sedgwick.-Early life:He was born in New York City to Henry Dwight Sedgwick II and Henrietta Ellery , grand daughter of William Ellery...
(The Sedgwicks were a prominent and well-connected family; The Atlantic Monthly was one of the country's most prestigious periodicals). In 1925, Marquand published his first important book, Lord Timothy Dexter, an exploration of the life and legend of eighteenth century Newburyport eccentric Timothy Dexter
Timothy Dexter (businessman)
"Lord" Timothy Dexter , as he was sometimes termed by admiring contemporaries, was an eccentric American businessman noted for a series of lucky transactions and his writing.-Biography:...
(1763–1806).
By the mid-1930s he was a prolific and successful writer of fiction for slick magazines like the Saturday Evening Post; during this period Marquand began producing a series of novels on the dilemmas of class, most centered on New England. The first of these, The Late George Apley
The Late George Apley
The Late George Apley is a 1937 novel by John Phillips Marquand. It is a satire of Boston's upper class. The title character is a Harvard-educated WASP living on Beacon Hill in downtown Boston....
(1937), a satire of Boston's upper class, won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1938. Other Marquand novels exploring New England and class themes include Wickford Point (1939), H.M. Pulham, Esquire (1941), and Point of No Return (1949). The last is especially notable for its satirical portrayal of Harvard anthropologist W. Lloyd Warner
W. Lloyd Warner
William Lloyd Warner was a pioneering anthropologist noted for applying the techniques of his discipline to contemporary American culture.-Career at Harvard:...
, whose Yankee City study attempted (and in Marquand's view, dismally failed) to describe and analyze the manners and mores of Marquand's Newburyport.
Popular fiction
Before gaining acclaim for his serious novels, Marquand achieved great popular and commercial success with a series of formulaic spy novels about the fictional Mr. MotoMr. Moto
Mr. Moto is a fictional Japanese secret agent created by the American author John P. Marquand. He appeared in six novels by Marquand published between 1935 and 1957. Marquand initially created the character for the Saturday Evening Post, which was seeking stories with an Asian hero after the death...
. The first, Your Turn, Mr. Moto appeared in 1935; the last, Right You Are, Mr. Moto, in 1957. The series inspired eight films, starring Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
, which are only very loosely based on the novels. James S. Koga states that Moto is not a proper Japanese surname. He notes that "[Mr. Moto] is never the main protagonist of the story—rather he appears at strategic points in the story, a catalyst for action." "The typical storyline", he says, "involves an American male, somewhat tarnished by past experiences in the U.S., who finds himself in the Orient ... overwhelmed by the foreignness of Asia. This protagonist gets involved in some international intrigue by happenstance, usually coinciding with meeting Mr. Moto, ... falls deeper into the plot and then finds himself in deadly peril. Along the way, he meets an attractive American woman who also becomes entangled, and by resourcefulness (and not a little help from Mr. Moto) overcomes the peril and then gets the girl."
Numerous Marquand novels became Hollywood films, but several bore little resemblance to the books. Mr. Moto, a tough-minded spy in Marquand's novels, became a genial police agent in the Peter Lorre films of the 1930s. The final Mr. Moto novel, in the 1950s, was filmed as a spy story, but Moto's character was eliminated.
Marquand's 1951 novel, Melville Goodwin, USA, was unrecognizable in the 1958 motion picture A Top-Secret Affair. The book was a satire about publicists trying to cover up a general's adultery, but movie writers transformed the general into a bachelor. According to Marquand's biographers, he took these Hollywood liberties in stride.
In his later years, Marquand also contributed an occasional satiric short story to Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
. A collection was later published as a book, with the title Life at Happy Knoll. The stories humorously dealt with the problems of an "old-line" country club as it tried to adjust to changing times and a competing "upstart" country club located nearby.
Marquand's short stories from 1921 through 1952
There is no collected edition of Marquand's short stories, though some eleven stories are collected in his miscellany Thirty Years. The following titles come from The Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, except the last two which come from Thirty Years.- Right that Failed--Saturday Evening Post, Jul 1921 Marquand wrote of this "According to my best recollection, the second short story I ever offered an editor was purchased by the Saturday Evening Post in the summer of 1921, and for many years after this initial success I managed to dispose of all the stories I wrote to a few competing sources at gradually rising prices"--See Thirty Years--Forward p. xiv.
- Eight Million Bubbles--Saturday Evening Post, Jan 1922
- Only a Few of Us Left--Saturday Evening Post, Jan 1922
- Different From Other Girls--Ladies Home Journal, Jul 1922
- Land of Bunk--Saturday Evening Post, Sep 1922
- Captain His Soul--Saturday Evening Post, Nov 1922
- Ship—Scribner's Magazine, Jan 1923
- By the Board--Saturday Evening Post, Mar 1923
- Last of the Tories--Saturday Evening Post, Mar 1924
- How Willie Came Across--Saturday Evening Post, Apr 1924
- Jervis Furniture--Saturday Evening Post, Apr 1924
- Pozzi of Perugia--Saturday Evening Post, Nov 1924
- Friend of the Family--Saturday Evening Post, Dec 1924
- Big Guys--Saturday Evening Post, Feb 1925
- Educated Money--Saturday Evening Post, Feb 1925
- Foot of the Class--Saturday Evening Post, Mar 1925
- Much Too Clever--Saturday Evening Post, Apr 1925
- Old Man--Saturday Evening Post, Jun 1925
- Jamaica Road--Saturday Evening Post, Jul 1925
- Last of the Hoopwells--Saturday Evening Post, Dec 1925
- Fun and Neighbors--Saturday Evening Post, Feb 1926
- Blame of Youth--Saturday Evening Post, May 1926
- Tea Leaves--Saturday Evening Post, May 1926
- Thousands in the Bank--Saturday Evening Post, May 1926
- Spitting Cat--Saturday Evening Post, Jul 1926
- Artistic Touch--Saturday Evening Post, Feb 1927
- Cinderalla Motif--Saturday Evening Post, Mar 1927
- Lord Chesterfield--Saturday Evening Post, Jun 1927
- Unknown Hero--Saturday Evening Post, Jul 1927
- Harvard Square Student--Saturday Evening Post, Dec 1927
- As the Case May Be--Saturday Evening Post, Jun 1928
- Aye, In the Catalogue--Saturday Evening Post, Aug 1928
- Good Black Sheep--Saturday Evening Post, Aug 1928
- Good Morning Major--Saturday Evening Post, Aug 1928—Also in Thirty Years
- End of the Story—Collier's, Apr 1929
- Oh Major, Major--Saturday Evening Post, Apr 1929
- Another Redskin Story--Saturday Evening Post, May 1929
- Darkest Horse--Saturday Evening Post, May 1929
- Mr Goof--Saturday Evening Post, May 1929
- Powaw's Head--Saturday Evening Post, Jul 1929
- Rain of Right--Saturday Evening Post, Jul 1929
- Best Must Always Go--Saturday Evening Post, Aug 1929
- Captain Whetstone--Saturday Evening Post, Aug 1929
- A Dog, A Woman--Saturday Evening Post, Oct 1929
- Ships must Sail--Saturday Evening Post, Nov 1929
- Jack's the Lad--Saturday Evening Post, Dec 1929
- Bobby Shaftoe--Saturday Evening Post, Feb 1930
- Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her--Saturday Evening Post, Mar 1930
- Slave Catcher--Saturday Evening Post, Apr 1930
- Obligations--Saturday Evening Post, Jul 1930
- Simon Pure—Collier's, Jul 1930
- Same Things--Saturday Evening Post, Aug 1930
- Master of the House--Saturday Evening Post, Sep 1930
- There is a Destiny--Saturday Evening Post, Nov 1930
- Rainbows--Saturday Evening Post, Dec 1930—Also in Thirty Years
- Golden Lads--Saturday Evening Post, Feb 1931—Also in Thirty Years
- All Play—Woman's Home Companion, Apr 1931
- Upstairs--Saturday Evening Post, Aug 1931
- Tolerance--Saturday Evening Post, Oct 1931
- Call Me Joe--Saturday Evening Post, Nov 1931
- Gentleman Ride--Saturday Evening Post, Nov 1931
- Ask Him--Saturday Evening Post, Jan 1932
- Deep Water--Saturday Evening Post, Feb 1932
- Music--Saturday Evening Post, Feb 1932
- Sold South--Saturday Evening Post, Mar 1932
- Jine the Calvalry--Saturday Evening Post, Apr 1932
- Jack Still--Saturday Evening Post, Jun 1932
- Far Away--Saturday Evening Post, Aug 1932
- High Tide--Saturday Evening Post, Oct 1932—Also in Thirty Years
- Dispatch Box No. 3--Saturday Evening Post, Nov 1932
- Fourth Down--Saturday Evening Post, Nov 1932—Also in Thirty Years
- Number One Good Girl--Saturday Evening Post, May 1933
- Winner Take All--Saturday Evening Post, Feb 1934
- Blockade--Saturday Evening Post, Mar 1934
- Davy Jones--Saturday Evening Post, Mar 1934
- Lord and Master—Collier's, Apr 1934
- Step Easy Stranger--Saturday Evening Post, Apr 1934
- Take the Man Away--Saturday Evening Post, Apr 1934
- Time for Us to Go--Saturday Evening Post, Apr 1934
- Back Pay—American Mercury, Apr 1934
- Sea Change--Saturday Evening Post, May 1935
- Flutter in Continentals--Saturday Evening Post, Jun 1935
- You Can't Do That--Saturday Evening Post, Jun 1935
- What's It Get You?--Saturday Evening Post, Jul 1935
- Yankee Notion--Saturday Evening Post, Nov 1935
- Hang it on the Horn--Saturday Evening Post, Mar 1936
- No One Ever Would--Saturday Evening Post, Apr 1936
- Put Those Things Away--Saturday Evening Post, Jun 1936
- Don't Cry for Me--Saturday Evening Post, Nov 1936
- Troy Weight--Saturday Evening Post, Dec 1936
- Marches Always Pay--Saturday Evening Post, Jan 1937
- Maharajah's Flower--Saturday Evening Post, Mar 1937
- "3-3-08"--Saturday Evening Post, Apr 1937
- Just Break the News--Saturday Evening Post, Jul 1937—Also in Thirty Years
- Pull, Pull Together--Saturday Evening Post, Jul 1937
- Everything's Fine—Collier's Oct 1937
- Castle Sinister—Collier's, Feb 1938
- Shirt Giver--Saturday Evening Post, Apr 1938
- Wickford Point--Saturday Evening Post, Feb 1939
- Beginning Now--Saturday Evening Post, Apr 1939—Also in Thirty Years
- Tell Me about the War--Saturday Evening Post, Jun 1939
- Don't Ask Questions--Saturday Evening Post, Oct 1939
- March On, He Said--Saturday Evening Post, Jun 1940
- Children's Page--Saturday Evening Post, Aug 1940
- She Was Always a Swell Girl—Good Housekeeping, Dec 1941
- Doctor's Orders—Collier's, May 1942
- Taxi Dance—Good Housekeeping, May 1942
- It's Loaded, Mr Bauer—Collier's, Jun 1942
- End Game—Good Housekeeping—Mar 1944—Also in Thirty Years
- Island—Good Housekeeping—Sep 1944
- I Heard an Old Man Say—Good Housekeeping—Oct 1944
- Just the Day for Tea—Scholastic—Sep 1944
- Lunch in Honolulu—Harpers—Aug 1945—Also in Thirty Years
- Repent in Haste—Harpers—Nov 1945
- Close to Home—Good Housekeeping—Nov 1947
- Sun, Sea and Sand—1950—Also in Thirty Years
- King of the Sea—1952—Also in Thirty Years
Novels
Mr Moto novels- No Hero. Boston, Little Brown, 1935 ; as Mr. Moto Takes a Hand, London, Hale, 1940 ; as Your Turn, Mr. Moto, New York, Berkley, 1963.
- Thank You, Mr. Moto. Boston, Little Brown, 1936 ; London, Jenkins, 1937.
- Think Fast, Mr. Moto. Boston, Little Brown, 1937 ; London, Hale, 1938.
- Mr. Moto Is So Sorry. Boston, Little Brown, 1938 ; London, Hale, 1939.
- Last Laugh, Mr. Moto. Boston, Little Brown, 1942 ; London, Hale, 1943.
- Stopover: Tokyo. Boston, Little Brown, and London, Collins, 1957 ; as The Last of Mr. Moto, New York, Berkley, 1963 ; as Right You Are, Mr. Moto, New York, Popular Library, 1977.
Other novels
- The Unspeakable Gentleman. New York, Scribner, and London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1922.
- The Black Cargo. New York, Scribner, and London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1925.
- Do Tell Me, Doctor Johnson. Privately printed, 1928.
- Warning Hill. Boston, Little Brown, 1930.
- Haven's End. Boston, Little Brown, 1933 ; London, Hale, 1938.
- Ming Yellow. Boston, Little Brown, and London, Lovat Dickson, 1935.
- The Late George ApleyThe Late George ApleyThe Late George Apley is a 1937 novel by John Phillips Marquand. It is a satire of Boston's upper class. The title character is a Harvard-educated WASP living on Beacon Hill in downtown Boston....
. Boston, Little Brown, 1937 - Wickford Point. Boston, Little Brown, 1939
- Don't Ask Questions. London, Hale, 1941 .
- H.M. Pulham, Esquire. Boston, Little Brown, and London, Hale, 1942.
- So Little Time. Boston, Little Brown, 1943 ; London, Hale, 1944.
- Repent in Haste. Boston, Little Brown, 1945 ; London, Hale, 1949.
- B.F.'s Daughter. Boston, Little Brown, 1946 ; as Polly Fulton, London, Hale, 1947.
- Point of No Return. Boston, Little Brown, and London, Hale, 1949.
- It's Loaded, Mr. Bauer. London, Hale, 1949.
- Melville Goodwin, USA. Boston, Little Brown, 1951 ; London, Hale, 1952.
- Sincerely, Willis Wayde. Boston, Little Brown, and London, Hale, 1955.
- Women and Thomas Harrow. Boston, Little Brown, 1958 ; London, Collins, 1959.
Social network and reputation
For all of his ambivalence about America's elite, Marquand ultimately succeeded not only in joining it, but in embodying its characteristics. He forgave the upper crust classmates who had snubbed him in college (relationships he satirized in H.M. Pulham, Esq). He was invited to join all the right social clubs in Boston (Tavern, Somerset) and New York (Century AssociationCentury Association
__notoc__The Century Association is a private club in New York City. It evolved out of an earlier organization – the Sketch Club, founded in 1829 by editor and poet William Cullen Bryant and his friends – and was established in 1847 by Bryant and others as a club to promote interest in...
, University).
Through his second marriage to Adelaide Ferry Hooker, he became linked to the Rockefeller family (her sister, Blanchette, was married to John D. Rockefeller III). He maintained luxury homes in Newburyport and in the Caribbean.
Death
Marquand died in Newburyport in 1960. Although his major work is largely out of print, his spy fiction remains in print. Like his contemporary John O'HaraJohn O'Hara
John Henry O'Hara was an American writer. He initially became known for his short stories and later became a best-selling novelist whose works include Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue...
(and with a lighter touch), Marquand addressed issue of privilege and inequality. Marquand's financial success and seeming veneration for the upper classes, like O'Hara's, was sufficient to cause academia to ignore him. Marquand was unsparing in his own scorn for academics, notably in Point of No Return (in which he lampoons anthropologist W. Lloyd Warner
W. Lloyd Warner
William Lloyd Warner was a pioneering anthropologist noted for applying the techniques of his discipline to contemporary American culture.-Career at Harvard:...
) and Wickford Point (in which he mocks a prominent member of Harvard's English Department).
Although currently in eclipse, Marquand's reputation may be poised for a revival. Jonathan Yardley, in a 2003 Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
column, says Marquand's contemporaries "found [his] satires of that world both hilarious and accurate, and so do I. That Marquand has almost vanished from the literary landscape is to me an unfathomable mystery. From ... 1937 ... until 1960, Marquand was one of the most popular novelists in the country. The literati turned up their noses at him (as they do to this day) because he had done a fair amount of hackwork in his early career and continued to write, unashamedly, for popular magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post."
Critic Martha Spaulding, writing in The Atlantic Monthly in 2004, noted that "in his day Marquand was compared to Sinclair Lewis and John O'Hara, and his social portrait of twentieth-century America was likened to Balzac's Comédie Humaine, [but] critics rarely took him very seriously. Throughout his career he believed, resentfully, that their lack of regard stemmed from his early success in the "slicks". Praising his "seductive, sonorous prose", she states that he "deserves to be rediscovered."
Marquand wrote the blurb on Witness by Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...
for the Book of the Month Club
Book of the Month Club
The Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
in 1952.
Demolition of Marquand's summer home
John Marquand bought a small farmhouse on a 466 acres (1.9 km²) tract of land called Kent's Island in Newbury, MassachusettsNewbury, Massachusetts
Newbury is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 6,666 at the 2010 census. Newbury includes the villages of Old Town , Plum Island and Byfield, home of The Governor's Academy , a private preparatory school.- History :Newbury Plantation was settled and incorporated...
in October 1935 for less than $5,000.(perhaps because the water supply was unreliable and the home required renovation). However, by the year of his death, his home at Kent's Island had been transformed into a rambling mansion by Marquand and his second wife. The couple had made numerous additions to the original structure which held a collection of museum-quality antiques and family heirlooms; including a Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...
portrait of a Marquand ancestor, as well as a silver tray fashioned by Paul Revere
Paul Revere
Paul Revere was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution. He is most famous for alerting Colonial militia of approaching British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Paul Revere's Ride...
.
Marquand expressed concern for the future of his estate shortly before his death. In Marquand", biographer Millicent Bell, wrote: "He wondered what would happen to Kent's Island when he died; he willed it to his three younger children but foresaw a time when they might not want it and imagined it enduring [...] under the protection of a preservation agency."
Marquand's concern was not unfounded. The children sold the vast property in April 1974 for $305,000 to Massachusetts.
The state maintained the mansion and kept a state police trooper there as a caretaker until 1978 when the well finally went dry. After the well dried and the home became vacant it deteriorated rapidly. By 1984, the mansion was in poor condition due to vandalism and exposure to the elements.
During 1984, a ten-year-old boy named Jeffrey Noonan wrote a letter to then-Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis
Michael Dukakis
Michael Stanley Dukakis served as the 65th and 67th Governor of Massachusetts from 1975–1979 and from 1983–1991, and was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988. He was born to Greek immigrants in Brookline, Massachusetts, also the birthplace of John F. Kennedy, and was the longest serving...
asking that action be taken in order to begin efforts to restore the home. His letter was answered by the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. The letter effectively informed the child that there were plans to raze the building. He took the letter, pedaled a bicycle to the office of the Newburyport Daily News and asked to see the editor. The newspaper interviewed and photographed the child for a front-page story. This started a local interest in the cause to save the home of the Pulitzer Prize winner from destruction.
Newburyport Magazine re-visited the story in its Fall, 2008 edition and interviewed Jeffrey Noonan (aka Jeffrey Justice) for the article. Discussing the youth's tenacity, the writer mentioned that the state was ready to pursue the demolition by 1984. "But they hadn't reckoned with Jeffrey. The fifth-grader kept up a barrage of publicity-- more newspaper stories and an interview on a Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
TV station. He went to the State House to talk to legislators."
The article also allowed for a broader understanding of the nature of the opposition: "There was a backlash, too. Noonan- now a 34-year old licensed psychic who goes by the name Jeffrey Justice-- recalls an angry telephone call, possibly fueled by alcohol, from a woman who had worked for Marquand, and other comments from older Newburyporters who hadn't approved of the novelist's sometimes messy personal life."
In 1989, John Marquand's Kent's Island home was ultimately torn down. A visit to the island today is discouraging, as there seems to be no trace of the big house or ruins of any of the smaller buildings present.