Biography Essay

James Gould Cozzens was a private man and (as a writer) a professional who believed that his time was best spent in writing, in the perfecting and mastering of his craft. Once launched on his career as a novelist at the age of twenty-one, Cozzens did very little else; and in this sense the story of his life is the story of his art.

James Gould Cozzens was born on 19 August 1903 in Chicago, Illinois, where his parents, both New Englanders, were temporarily residing. Tak- ing an executive position with a New York printing machinery company in 1906, Cozzens's father moved the family to Staten Island, which was still a rural locale. Cozzens later recalled that there were "wide second-growth woodlands" between villages and farms where people, "as they had for a hundred and fifty years, grew vegetables, harvested hay, raised chickens, and maintained small dairy herds."

Cozzens's...