- Born: May 19, 1903
- Birthplace: Chicago, Il
- Died: 1996
Though he started out in law and literature, Ernest Samuels was best known for his biographical works on Henry Adams and Bernard Berenson.
Raised in Chicago, Samuels graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor of philosophy degree in Law and French in 1923, and a law degree in 1926. He went on for a masters of art in English, and began to teach law and English at Bryant and Stratton College, serving as chairman of the English department there. At the same time, he developed a business English textbook/workbook, Business English Projects (1936, plus later editions), which was adopted by some 600 schools. He taught Literature at Washington State University and then returned to the University of Chicago to get his doctorate in American and English Literature. He chose as his thesis topic "The Early Career of Henry Adams," which he would turn into the first in his three-volume set of books on the American historian.
After Samuels received his PhD in 1942, he accepted a teaching position at Northwestern University, where he remained until his retirement in 1971. The second volume of his series, Henry Adams: The Middle Years, won a Parkman Prize by the Society of American Historians and Columbia University's Bancroft Prize. The third volume, Henry Adams: The Major Phase, brought him the Pulitzer Prize in Biography. When Samuels retired from teaching, he became the official biographer of art critic and historian Bernard Berenson.
Most Famous Works
- The Young Henry Adams (1948)
- Henry Adams: The Middle Years (1958)
- Henry Adams: The Major Phase (1964)
- Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseur (1979)
- Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Legend (1987)
