Allen Drury
Allen Stuart Drury (September 2, 1918 – September 2, 1998) was an American novelist. During World War II, he was a reporter in the Senate, closely observing Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, among others. He would convert these experiences into his first novel Advise and Consent, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1960. Long afterwards, it was still being praised as ‘the definitive Washington tale’. His diaries from this period were published as A Senate Journal 1943–45.
Allen Drury
September 2, 1918
September 2, 1998 (aged 80)
Journalist, novelist
1943–1998
- Tulare Bee
- Bakersfield Californian
- Pathfinder Magazine
- Washington Evening Star
- The New York Times
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and 20 novels
Early life and ancestry[edit]
Drury was born on September 2, 1918, in Houston, Texas, to Alden Monteith Drury (1895–1975), a citrus industry manager, real estate broker, and insurance agent, and Flora Allen (1894–1973), a legislative representative for the California Parent-Teacher Association.[1] The family moved to Whittier, California, where Alden and Flora had a daughter, Anne Elizabeth (1924–1998). Drury was a direct descendant of Hugh Drury (1616–1689)[2] and Lydia Rice (1627–1675), daughter of Edmund Rice (1594–1663), all of whom were early immigrants to Massachusetts Bay Colony.[3]
Allen Stuart Drury grew up in Porterville, California, and earned his B.A. at Stanford University, where he joined Alpha Kappa Lambda, in 1939. He told Writer's Yearbook that he was "associate editor, wrote a column, and editorials." [4] His last series of novels, written shortly before he died, were inspired by his experiences at Stanford. After graduating from Stanford, Drury went to work for the Tulare Bee in Porterville in 1940, where he won the Sigma Delta Chi Award for editorial writing from the Society of Professional Journalists.[1] He then moved to Bakersfield and wrote for the Bakersfield Californian, where he "handled what they called county news."[4] Drury enlisted in the U.S. Army on July 25, 1942, in Los Angeles and trained as an infantry soldier, but was discharged "because of an old back injury."[4][5]
Personal life and death[edit]
Drury, whose "passions were reading and travel…was an intensely private man, who never married, and lived quietly."[1] In one of the White House audiotapes, Richard Nixon in conversation with H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman stated, "Allen Drury is a homosexual."[30]
Drury lived in Tiburon, California, from 1964 until his death. He completed his 20th novel, Public Men, just two weeks before his death. He died of cardiac arrest on September 2, 1998, his 80th birthday, at St. Mary's Medical Center in San Francisco, California.[1]