Winston Churchill

The American author Winston Churchill (1871-1947) was known during his lifetime for his historical and political novels.

Born in St. Louis, Winston Churchill went to Smith Academy, then attended Annapolis. He served briefly in the U.S. Navy, working as an editor for the Army and Navy Journal, and then joined the staff of Cosmopolitan Magazine. He had been encouraged to write during his years in the Naval Academy and soon began a career as an author.

Churchill's first novel, The Celebrity: An Episode (1898), satirized the era's literary and fashionable world. This book introduced him to the public and gave him practice in portraying two kinds of characters that eventually loomed large in his works - the politician and the business tycoon.

Richard Carvel (1899) is a romantic historical novel of the American Revolutionary period. Though carefully written, the book has the episodic structure characteristic of Churchill. It became a best seller because of the conscientious research that gave remarkable authenticity to events and characters.

Churchill determined to cover "the most emphasized epochs in the history of this country" in a series of novels. The Crisis (1901), set mainly in St. Louis, where northern and southern emigrants and German immigrants had commingled in a border region, pictures the Civil War in a new way. The Crossing (1904), a panorama of America's westward movement and the newly settled frontier during the Revolution, is generally considered Churchill's best historical novel. Like its predecessors, this narrative vividly characterizes a number of outstanding historical figures.

By 1904, however, public interest in historical fiction had waned, and a group of "muckraking" journalists were exposing graft and corruption in the United States. Churchill was affected by the trend and began to write about contemporary issues. Coniston (1906) shows the long-lasting ethical conflicts in New England's politics; Mr. Crewe's Career (1908) examines a railroad's attempt to dominate a state. A Modern Chronicle (1910) deals with divorce, The Inside of the Cup (1913) with religion, A Far Country (1915) with the need for the control of corporations, and The Dwelling-Placeof Light (1917) with the rise of radicalism. His work established the value of research to the historical novelist.

Further Reading

Charles Child Walcutt, The Romantic Compromise in the Novels of Winston Churchill (1951), and Warren Irving Titus, Winston Churchill (1963), treat Churchill's life and work. General studies which discuss Churchill's novels include Ernest Erwin Leisy, The American Historical Novel (1950); Grant C. Knight, The Strenuous Age in American Literature (1954); and Joseph L. Blotner, The Political Novel (1955).

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Churchill, Winston, 1871-1947, American novelist, b. St. Louis, grad. Annapolis, 1894. He wrote several popular historical novels including Richard Carvel (1899), The Crisis (1901), and The Crossing (1904). His later books, such as Coniston (1906), The Inside of the Cup (1913), and The Dwelling-Place of Light (1917), reflected his interest in social, religious, and political problems.

(1871-1947)

1899	Richard Carvel. Churchill's initial popular success, and the first in a series of well-received historical novels, is set during the Revolutionary War and depicts a young man who finds himself aboard John Paul Jones's Bonhomme Richard. Churchill was born in St. Louis and lived mainly in New Hampshire after graduating from Annapolis.
1901	The Crisis. Set in St. Louis during the Civil War, Churchill's novel concerns a Boston lawyer who falls in love with the daughter of a Southern sympathizer, witnesses some pivotal events of the war, and encounters historical figures such as Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman. A popular and critical success, the novel helps establish Churchill as one of America's foremost novelists of the era.
1904	The Crossing. Regarded as Churchill's best novel, this historical romance is set during the Revolutionary War along the Kentucky frontier and includes appearances by the frontiersmen George Rogers Clark, Simon Kenton, and Daniel Boone.
1906	Coniston. Churchill's novel about New England politics in the nineteenth century features one of his greatest characters, the unscrupulous politician Jethro Bass, modeled on an actual New Hampshire political boss. It is the first in a series of social problem novels that includes Mr. Crewe's Career (1908), also about politics; A Modern Chronicle (1910), on divorce; The Inside of the Cup (1913), on the modern church; and The Dwelling Place of Light (1917), on industrialization.
1913	Inside the Cup. Churchill's best-regarded novel dealing with social problems considers the inadequate attempts of the modern church to deal with contemporary realities. It features an out-of-touch minister who is sent to an urban Midwestern parish.
1915	A Far Country. A modern version of the parable of the prodigal son, set in the Midwest of the 1880s during the Robber Baron era. Readers generally resisted the novel as a ponderous, lifeless allegory on the need for business reform and the importance of a social conscience.
1917	The Dwelling-Place of Light. The novel depicts labor unrest in a Massachusetts mill town as the I.W.W. calls a strike. It is noteworthy for the realism employed in depicting contemporary labor conditions and the details of the strike.
1919	Dr. Jonathan. Churchill's unproduced play argues that the significant outcome of the Great War is the vindication of democracy, dramatized by a returning war veteran who applies democratic management ideas to the running of a New England mill.

Quotes:

"In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used frequently to take my advice."

"We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage."

"They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent."

"Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization."

"It has been said that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

"The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult."

See more famous quotes by Winston Churchill

(Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill; 1874--1965), Prime minister of Great Britain from May 1940 until the end of World War II.

During the 1930s, Churchill was one of the few British politicians who spoke out against then Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement of Adolf Hitler. He also called for an active buildup of the British army in the face of the threat of Nazi Germany. In addition, he supported Jewish immigration to Palestine, and opposed the White Paper of 1939, which limited Jewish immigration to Palestine and the purchase of land there by Jews.

When Britain declared war on Germany after the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939, Churchill was invited to reprise his World War I position as the head of the British navy. After the fall of France in May 1940, the British parliament chose Churchill over Chamberlain as prime minister.

On several occasions during the war, Prime Minister Churchill announced his intentions of supporting the creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine after Germany was defeated. A Cabinet Committee on Palestine was even formed, which recommended the partition of the mandate between Arabs and Jews. The British cabinet accepted this decision in January 1944.

However, Churchill's attitude of "after Germany is defeated" also colored his efforts to save European Jewry, of whose situation he was fully aware. He wanted to help, but felt that the best way to rescue the Jews would be to totally vanquish Nazi Germany. Helping the Jews would and could only come after this was achieved. In a letter dated February 1943, Churchill outlined the reasons why Britain would not actively take part in the rescue efforts: transportation of the Refugees would present a major problem, as the escape routes would cross through military areas and thus interfere with the war effort; and it would not be possible to save Jewish refugees while deserting the other citizens of German-occupied areas. In July 1944 Churchill approved the Jewish Agency's pleas to bomb Auschwitz. This never happened, though, due to obstacles caused by the Allied military and bureaucracy. (see also Auschwitz, Bombing of.)

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