Margaret Widdemer

Margaret Widdemer (September 30, 1884 - July 14, 1978) was an American poet and novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize (known then as the Columbia University Prize) in 1919 for her collection The Old Road to Paradise, shared with Carl Sandburg for Cornhuskers. She graduated from the Drexel Institute Library School in 1909. She first came to public attention with her poem The Factories, which treated the subject of child labor. In 1919, she married Robert Haven Schauffler (1879-1964), a widower five years her senior. Schauffler was an author and cellist who published widely on poetry, travel, culture, and music. His papers are held at the University of Texas at Austin.

Margaret Widdemer was born on September 30th, 1884 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Asbury Park, New Jersey. She graduated from the Drexel Institute Library School in 1909. Margaret first gained recognition with her poem 'The Factories', and its subject of child labor. In 1919, she married Robert Haven Schauffler, a widower five years her senior who was an author and cellist and published widely on poetry, travel, culture, and music. That same year she won the Pulitzer Prize (then still known as the Columbia University Prize) for this collection 'The Old Road to Paradise'. The award was shared with Carl Sandburg for 'Cornhuskers'. Margaret's career was long and prolific covering poetry, adult and children's fiction and some self-help guidance books. Her friendships covered such authors as Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Thornton Wilder, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Margaret Widdemer died in New York City, on July 14th, 1978.

The Haunted Hour is an anthology of ghost poetry, published in 1920. From the Preface: This does not attempt to be an inclusive anthology. The ghostly poetry of the late war alone would have made a book as large as this; and an inclusive scheme would have ended as a six-volume Encyclopedia of Ghostly Verse. I hope that this may be called for some day. I have not considered as ghost-poems anything but poems which related to the return of spirits to earth.... If a poem would be a ghost-story, in short, I have considered it a ghost-poem, not otherwise. Margaret Widdemer (1884 - 1978) was a poet, editor, and novelist. She won the Columbia University Prize (later known as the Pulitzer) in 1919 for her poetry collection, The Old Road to Paradise.