‘Mastership at One Leap’: 1885–1908

Abstract

Hailey, Idaho — even in 1885 — seems at first an unlikely place for the birth of one of America’s, and later Europe’s, most controversial if not provocative writers. But in that lawless town that had one hotel and fifty bars on its unpaved streets, Ezra Loomis Pound was born on 30 October to Homer and Isabel Pound. What brought the Pounds to the west was work: the son of Congressman Thaddeus C. Pound of Wisconsin (former member of the Wisconsin State Assembly and Lieutenant Governor of the state in 1869), Homer Pound needed a job and through his father’s influence received an appointment at the newly opened Federal Land Office in Hailey.

I could write a whole American history by implication stickin’ to unknown folks, in four or five families.

(Pound, May 1942)