Abstract
Seldes left journalism in 1929 and while living the literary life in Paris wrote several books in quick succession documenting his life and views as a foreign correspondent. He was the first of many who went on to do the same in the 1930s. Seldes sought to explain for American readers the economic and political consequences of the First World War and warn them of the rising tide of reactionary regimes emerging in Europe. He wrote about the influence of the Catholic Church, the growth in the munitions industry and the political influence garnered by bankers, large manufacturers and corporations as they funded recovery efforts. Seldes also wrote about Mussolini and although he found it difficult to get the book published initially, it went on to become a bestseller.
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Notes
- 1.
“George Seldes writes about his brother. Both are Well Known.” June 12, 1929. Putnam Courant.
- 2.
Letter Seldes to Schultz March 8, 1928, Seldes Collection Van Pelt Archives; July 2, 1927, Schultz to McCormack, Schultz Collection.
- 3.
Taylor S.J. 1990. Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty. The New York Time’s Man in Moscow. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 225.
- 4.
Letter July 2, 1927, Schultz to McCormick, Schultz Collection.
- 5.
Seldes, George. 1953. Tell the Truth and Run. New York: Greenburg Publishers; x, 18.
- 6.
The New York Observer, June 12, 1929.
- 7.
Seldes, George. 1953; 225.
- 8.
Weber, Ronald. 2006. World’s Zaniest Newspaper. News of Paris: American j in the City of Lights between the Wars. Chicago, Ivan R. Dee; 5.
- 9.
Sheean, Vincent. 1935. In Search of History. London: Hamish Hamilton; 344.
- 10.
Weber, 2006; 6.
- 11.
Sheean, 1935; 44.
- 12.
Stearns, Harold E. 1935. The Street I Know: The Autobiography of the Last Bohemians. Maryland: M. Evans Lanham; 299.
- 13.
Hemingway held a grudge against George’s brother Gilbert because he believed that he had rejected one of his articles when he was the editor of Dial and in an attack on Gilbert, Hemingway contrasted him with his brother George whom he described as “a damned fine newspaperman” in an Esquire article published in January 1935. Kammen, Michael G. 1996. The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States, Oxford: Oxford University Press; 195.
- 14.
Edgar Mowrer expressed this critique when he wrote: “I disliked government of, by, and for business. America the free had become primarily America the prosperous, the land of unlimited (economic) opportunity.” Mowrer, Edgar Ansel. 1928 This American World. New York. J.H. Sears & Company Inc.; 188.
- 15.
The expatriate writers in Paris were a relatively stable community of around 6000 at the beginning of the decade and this had risen to 30,000 by the middle of the decade and approximately 60,000 in all of France. Weber Ronald. 2006; 5.
- 16.
Rood, Karen Lane. (Ed.) 1980. Dictionary of Literary Biography: Vol. 4. American Writers In Paris 1920–1939. Detroit Michigan: A Bruccoli Clark Book, Gale Research Company. In a preface Hemingway wrote for Kiki’s Memoirs, he bemoaned that Montparnasse had been discovered by the French bourgeoisie and he observed with distaste the rise in German tourists and Nazi surveillance. Edgar Mowrer (1970) also observed that by the end of the decade the Latin Quarter was thick with foreigners and there was a “new emptiness in French public life” (184). Mowrer, Edgar Ansel. 1970. Triumph and turmoil: a personal history of our time. London: George, Allen & Unwin Ltd.
- 17.
William L. Shirer described Paris in the late 1920s as a “golden time [when] one could be wonderfully carefree in the beautiful, civilised city, released from all the puritan bourgeois restraints that had stifled a young American at home.” Heald, Morrell. 1988. Transatlantic Vistas: American Journalists in Europe 1900–1940. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press; 58.
- 18.
Malcolm Cowley, author of Exile’s Return, argued that these writers played a critical role in developing and expressing American culture and communicating it to the rest of the world. Rood, Karen Lane. (Ed.) 1980.
- 19.
Paul Mowrer (1922) Balkanization of Europe; Edgar Mowrer (1922) This American World, (1928) Immortal Italy, (1933) Germany Puts the Clock Back; Herbert Knickerbocker (1934) The Boiling Point; David Darrah (1934) Hail Caesar; Vincent Sheean (1934) Personal History; Raymond Swing (1935) Forerunners of American Fascism; Negley Farson (1936) The Way of the Transgressor; John Gunther (1936) Inside Europe; Vincent Sheehan (1939) Not Peace but a Sword; William L. Shirer (1940) Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934–1941; Leland Stowe (1934) Nazi Germany Means War; Edmond Taylor (1940) The Strategy of Terror: Europe’s Inner Front; Dorothy Thompson (1939) Let the Record Speak; Wythe Williams (1937) Dusk of Empire: the Decline of Europe and the Rise of the United States as Observed by a Foreign Correspondent in a Quarter Century of Service.
- 20.
Sanders, Marion K. 1973. Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Time. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company; 89.
- 21.
Seldes, George. 1935. Freedom of the Press. Indianapolis. The Bobbs-Merrill Company; 270.
- 22.
Sheean. 1935; 63. Vincent Sheean also wrote of this and how it was against the “code to say plainly in print” that the French financed the Rhineland rebellion or that Mussolini was close to those who murdered Matteotti or that the press and politicians were “on sale to the highest bidder.”
- 23.
You can’t print that, says Seldes F.S.S. Journalism Quarterly; January 1, 1929; 6, 2; ProQuest; 12.
- 24.
Harold Norman Denny, review of You Can’t Print That, by George Seldes in the New Republic (May 8, 1929); 310.
- 25.
Letter from Seldes to Schultz. April 3, 1929. Schultz Collection.
- 26.
Heald, 1988; 120.
- 27.
Shirer, William L. 1940. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934–1941. Boston: Little Brown & Company; 44.
- 28.
Seldes, George. 1931 Can These Things Be. New York. Brewer & Warren; 197.
- 29.
Ibid.; 199.
- 30.
Ibid.; 199.
- 31.
Ibid.; 202.
- 32.
Revelations requiring a grain of salt New York Times (1923–Current file); May 31, 1931; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times pg. BR9.
- 33.
Brickell, Herschel. The literary landscape. North American Review vol. 238, no. 1, 1934, pp. 88–96. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25114480
- 34.
Murphy, D.P. 1988. The lonely battle: American dreams and nightmares and the debate over intervention in the Second World War (Order No. 8902674). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (303578115). Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.uwa.edu.au/docview/303578115?accountid=14681
- 35.
Gilbert Seldes, review of World Panorama, by George Seldes. In the New York Evening Journal September 10, 1933.
- 36.
Panorama traces events since the War (1933, Jun 09). New York Times (1923–Current File) Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.uwa.edu.au/docview/100634267?accountid=14681
- 37.
Chapman Hall to Seldes May 27, 1932. Seldes Collection.
- 38.
Letter to Seldes. October 21, 1932. Seldes Collection.Â
- 39.
Letter from Arthur Baker to Seldes January 4, 1936. Seldes Collection.
- 40.
Seldes wrote to Schultz on June 14, 1931, describing how his father had been hit by a motorcycle, developed blood poisoning, which turned to gangrene and had his leg amputated. Seldes Senior then spent three months in hospital before he died of pneumonia. Seldes Collection.Â
- 41.
Taylor, S.J. 1990. Stalin’s Apologist, Walter Duranty, The New York Times Man in Moscow. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 173–174.
- 42.
From Helen Seldes to Kyle Crichton March 14, 1937. Kyle Crichton Letters. New York Times Public Library.
Bibliography
Heald, Morrell. 1988. Transatlantic Vistas: American Journalists in Europe 1900–1940. Kent, Ohio. Kent State University Press.
Mowrer, Edgar Ansel. 1928. This American World. New York: J.H. Sears and Company. Inc.
Mowrer, Edgar Ansel. 1970. Triumph and Turmoil: A Personal History of Our Time. London: George Allen and Uwin Ltd.
Seldes, George. 1953. Tell the Truth and Run. New York: Greenberg Publisher.
Seldes, George. 1929. You Can’t Print That. New York: Payson and Clarke.
Seldes, George. 1931. Can There Things Be. New York. Brewer and Warren.
Sheean, Vincent. 1935. In Search of History. London: Hamish Hamilton.
Shirer, William L. 1940. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934–1941. Boston: Little Brown and Company.
Stowe, Leland. 1934. Nazi Germany Means War. London: Faber and Faber Limited.
Taylor, Edmond. 1940. The Strategy of Terror: Europe’s Inner Front. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Thompson, Dorothy. 1939. Let the Record Speak. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Weber, Ronald. 2006. World’s Zaniest Newspaper. News of Paris: American Journalists in the City of Lights Between the Wars. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
Williams, Wythe. 1937. Dusk of Empire: The Decline of Europe and the Rise of the United States as Observed by a Foreign Correspondent in a Quarter Century of Service. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
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Fordham, H. (2019). Writer. In: George Seldes’ War for the Public Good. Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30877-3_4
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