The Autobiography of William Allen White was published posthumously by Macmillan in 1946 (White died in 1944) and won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1947. It covers White’s life from his childhood in El Dorado and Emporia, Kansas, through his career as editor of the Emporia Gazette — the small-town newspaper that became, improbably, one of the most influential editorial voices in America.
White’s autobiography is the story of Middle America coming to terms with modernity: a Kansas boy born during Reconstruction who lived to see the atomic bomb, who knew every president from McKinley to Roosevelt, and who watched his beloved small-town America transformed by industrialization, world wars, and the New Deal. White writes with the directness and humor of a good newspaperman — no pretension, no posturing, but considerable wisdom accumulated over decades of observing American life at both the grassroots and the national level.
The book is valuable both as personal memoir and as political history. White knew everyone — Theodore Roosevelt (his hero), Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, FDR — and his portraits of these men combine personal observation with shrewd political judgment. His account of Kansas politics, of the progressive movement’s rise and decline, and of small-town American life in transformation provides an unmatched insider’s perspective on a crucial period in American history.
Collecting The Autobiography of William Allen White
First edition (Macmillan, New York, 1946): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $40–$100
- Very good: $15–$40