RARE "Pulitzer Prize for History" Margaret Leech Signed Note For Sale

Up for sale a RARE! "Pulitzer Prize for History" Margaret Leech Hand Signed Note.

ES-9804

Margaret Kernochan Leech

(November 7, 1893 – February 24, 1974), also known as Margaret Pulitzer,

was an American historian and fiction writer. She won the Pulitzer Prize for History both in 1942 (Reveille in Washington, Harper)

(first woman to win for history) and in 1960 (In the Days of McKinley, Harper).  She was born in Newburgh, New York, obtained a B.A. from Vassar

College in 1915, and worked for fund-raising organizations during

World War I, including the American Committee for Devastated

France. She started her writing career for the Condé Nast publishing company before World

War I. Leech also worked in advertising and publicity. After the war, she

became friendly with members of the Algonquin Round Table, including

critic-raconteur Alexander Woollcott. She was an associate of

some of the wittiest and most brilliant men and women of literature that spent

time at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan.

In 1928 she married Ralph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York

World newspaper. (His father, Joseph

Pulitzer, had established the Pulitzer

Prize by a bequest to Columbia University.) They had one daughter,

Susan. Reveille in Washington, 1860-1865, is an account of Washington,

D.C. during the American Civil War and deals with, among other

things, Abraham Lincoln and his wife, along with Rose Greenhow,

the Confederate spy whose work was helpful in the Southern forces winning the First Battle of Bull Run. Passages from

the book are quoted in George Saunders' novel, Lincoln In The Bardo

(2016). In the Days of McKinley is a biography of President William

McKinley, carefully told in minute detail, and he is shown as a more

attractive person and better president than some have depicted him. In addition

to the history Pulitzer, the book was awarded the Bancroft

Prize in 1960. Leech also wrote three novels: The Back of the

Book (1924), Tin Wedding (1926), and The Feathered Nest

(1928) and, in 1927, co-wrote a biography of Anthony

Comstock with Heywood Broun.[ Leech died of a stroke in New York

City at age 80.