E. L. Doctorow Biography | Author of Ragtime

Ragtime Author Biography

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born in the Bronx, in New York City, in 1931. Both of his parents were children of Russian Jewish immigrants, and the Jewish faith has been a powerful influence on his life and writing. He attended Brand High School of Science and then went on to Kenyon College in Ohio, which had a reputation as a good school for writers: while there, he studied under the poet John Crowe Ransom and met other writers who either were or would be famous. After receiving an A.B. in philosophy in 1952, he attended Columbia University in New York for a year, but then was drafted, and he spent the next two years in the army. Returning to civilian life, he married and worked a series of odd jobs, including reading novels for CBS Television and Columbia Pictures: "I was reading a book a day, seven days a week,...
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