American Literature Web Resources: John Dos Passos

Chronology and Selected Bibliography

compiled by Jay Schleppenbach, Millikin University

1896-- Born Janaury 14 to John Randolph Dos Passos and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison.

1907-- Enters Choate School, Wallingford, Conn.

1912-16-- Is a student at Harvard.

1917-18-- Is in ambulance service units in France and Italy.

1918-- Enlists in the U.S. Army Medical Corps.

1920-- Publishes One Man's Initiation -- 1917.

1921-- Publishes Three Soldiers, the novel is met with wide acclaim.

1922-- Publishes A Pushcart at the Curb , and Rosinante to the Road Again.

1923-- Publishes Streets of Night.

1924-- Meets with Hemingway in Paris, they form association that will last ten years.

1925-- Publishes Manhattan Transfer.

1926-1929-- Directs New Playwrights' Theatre, NYC.

1927-- Publishes Facing the Chair , a work defending immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti, and Orient Express.

1928-- Spends several months in Russia studying the socialist view.

1929-- Marries Katharine Smith.

1931-- Visits Kentucky mines with Dreiser.

1934-- Signs "Open Letter to the Communist Party," criticizing its stifling of dissent.

1938-- Publishes USA's three volumes as a set.

1939-- Draws attacks from former radical allies for Adventures of a Young Man.

1949-- Publishes political/philosophical The Ground we Stand On..

1942-45-- Observes theatres of WWII, begins serving as a reporter.

1947-- Loses sight in one eye in an auto accident; his wife is killed. Is elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters.

1949-- Marries Elizabeth Holdridge.

1950-- Lucy Hamlin Dos Passos is born.

1954-- Publishes Jefferson biography.

1957-- Receives Gold Medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Publishes The Men Who Made the Nation.

1959-- Publishes Prospects of a Golden Age.

1961-- Midcentury, a new novel, is published to good critical notices.

1966-- Publishes The Shackles of Power , also The Best Times, an informal memoir.

1967-- Receives Feltrinelli Prize for Fiction.

1970-- Dies of heart failure in Baltimore on September 28.

1974-- Two works are published posthumously, Easter Island -- and Cetury's Ebb.


Books About Dos Passos:

Becker, George J. John Dos Passos.

Brantley, John D. The Fiction of John Dos Passos.

Landsberg, Melvin. Dos Passos' Path to USA.

Ludington, Townsend. The Fourteenth Chronicle: Letters and Diaries of John Dos Passos.

Wrenn, John H. John Dos Passos.


PAL Dos Passos link


Last modified June, 2003 by Dr. Michael O'Conner. Contact: moconner@millikinor Click Here to Email