Ernest Poole (1880 - 1950)

Ernest Cook Poole (January 23, 1880 – January 10, 1950) was an American novelist. He was born in Chicago, Illinois on January 23, 1880, and graduated from Princeton University in 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 Saturday Evening Post in Europe before and during World War I. His novel The Harbor (1915) is the work for which he is best known. It presents a strong socialist message, set among the proletariat of the industrial Brooklyn waterfront. It is considered one of the first fictional works to offer a positive view of unions. His portrait of a New York family titled His Family made him the first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1918. "The consensus is that it's the lesser of the two works, that the Pulitzer committee was really honoring Poole for The Harbor".