Publisher's Synopsis
John Phillips Marquand (1893-1960) was a 20th-century American novelist. He achieved popular success and critical respect, winning the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Late George Apley and creating the Mr. Moto spy series. One of his abiding themes was the confining nature of life in America's upper class and among those who aspired to join it. He treated those whose lives were bound by these unwritten codes with a characteristic mix of respect and satire. In 1925, Marquand published his first important book, Lord Timothy Dexter. A prolific and successful writer of fiction for slick magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, in the mid-1930s, he began producing a series of novels on the dilemmas of class, most centered on New England. Before gaining acclaim for his serious novels, Marquand achieved great popular and commercial success with a series of formulaic spy novels about the fictional Mr. Moto. The first, Your Turn, Mr. Moto appeared in 1935. His other works include: The Unspeakable Gentleman (1922), The Black Cargo (1925) and Warning Hill (1930).
