E. L. Doctorow

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (New York, 1931 – New York, 2015) was an American novelist who also worked as an editor and professor. Placing invented characters alongside real historical figures, he made the past a central subject of his fiction, and his method changed how many American writers of the second half of the twentieth century approached history.

He was born in the Bronx to second-generation children of Russian Jewish immigrants. He studied at Kenyon College with John Crowe Ransom and graduated with honors in 1952. After military service in West Germany, he worked as a reader for a film company and then as an editor at New American Library and The Dial Press, where he was editor in chief from 1964 to 1969. His first novel, Welcome to Hard Times (1960), began as a parody of the Western and grew into a reflection on the genre. He drew wide attention with The Book of Daniel (1971), a fictionalized account of the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Ragtime (1975), set in New York at the start of the twentieth century, became his greatest commercial success and won a National Book Critics Circle Award. In it Freud and Jung share a ride at Coney Island, and Henry Ford meets J. P. Morgan. Later came World's Fair, Billy Bathgate, and The March (2005), which earned him another National Book Critics Circle Award. His style pairs a fairly traditional narrative manner with a free exploration of the past. He rejected the label of political novelist, believing the language of politics did not suit the complexity of fiction.

He taught at several universities and held the Glucksman Professorship of American Letters at New York University, which holds his papers in its Fales Library. He died of complications from lung cancer in 2015, aged 84. His legacy lies in showing that the past remains alive in the present, and that historical fiction can serve as a tool for critical reflection.