Waverley Root, writer and journalist, began his career in Paris working for the European edition of the Chicago Tribune, often called the Paris Tribune. As a literary critic for that newspaper he spoke in favor of literary standards and opposed the avant-garde extremism of writers whose experiments led to unintelligibility.

Waverley Lewis Root was born in Providence, Rhode Island, but when he was seven his family moved to Fall River, Massachusetts, where he was educated in the public schools. He attended Tufts College, now Tufts University, for three years, and although he did not complete the requirements for graduation, in 1940 Tufts gave Root his B.A. ex ordinem, as an earned degree. While at Tufts he was campus correspondent for a Boston newspaper during his first year and for the Associated Press during his second and third years. He also worked on the Tufts student newspaper and was...