Justin Kaplan

Biographer and editor

• Born: September 5, 1925
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: March 2, 2014
• Place of death: Cambridge, Massachusetts

A writer and editor, Kaplan is best known for his biographies of historical figures. He wrote and edited books that won the Pulitzer Prize.

Areas of achievement: Literature; scholarship

Early Life

Justin Kaplan (KAP-lihn), son of Tobias and Anna Kaplan, was born in New York City. Kaplan’s father owned the Dexter Shirt Company, a financially stable concern. Kaplan grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family, but his mother died when he was eight years old, and his father died six years later, when Kaplan was fourteen. As a child, Kaplan found Judaism and its practices to be old fashioned and hindrances to experiencing a secular, Americanized lifestyle. However, as he grew older, Kaplan came to appreciate and identify with his Jewish heritage more.

Kaplan graduated from Harvard University in 1944, and he returned in later years to lecture periodically. However, he considered writing and editing to be his true line of work. Noted for his award-winning biographies, Kaplan has said that his past contributed to his interest in writing about other people. The struggle he had to renew his life after the deaths of his parents led Kaplan to become curious about the hardships of others. In his biographies, he artfully examines his subjects to find how they adjusted to major changes in their lives.

Kaplan married author Anne Bernays on July 29, 1954. They had three children: Susanna Bernays, Hester Margaret, and Polly Anne. Kaplan and Bernays came from similar backgrounds and collaborated to write a joint memoir about their lives, Back Then: Two Literary Lives in 1950’s New York (2002).

Life’s Work

Kaplan worked as a freelance writer in New York from 1946 until 1954, when he became an editor at Simon and Schuster. In 1959, he became a full-time writer. Over the years, Kaplan lectured at Harvard University (1969, 1973, 1976, 1978) and at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia (1983).

Kaplan is best known for his biographical works. His first, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, published in 1966, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Arts and Letters. In this, the most famous of his biographies, Kaplan pointed out the tension between the man Samuel Clemens and his alias Mark Twain. Literary critics praised Kaplan’s style, especially his ability to engage the reader by enlivening the biography format into a work that is entertaining and observes the mysteries of significant individuals in history.

Kaplan’s other works include Lincoln Steffens: A Biography (1974); Mark Twain and His World (1974); Walt Whitman: A Life (1980), which won the American Book Award in 1981; and When the Astors Owned New York (2006). In addition, Kaplan wrote two books with his wife: The Language of Names (1997) and Back Then. In addition to writing, Kaplan also edited various works, including the sixteenth and seventeenth editions of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (1992, 2002). Kaplan became a member of several organizations, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Society of American Historians, and Phi Beta Kappa.

Significance

Kaplan’s ability to write biographies that read like novels earned him lavish praise from literary critics. He won awards for his works on Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, both historical figures who provided mystery for Kaplan to unwind and bring forward in his writing. Kaplan’s tragic past helped establish his future line of work. In overcoming adversity and unhappy conditions, Kaplan was drawn to discovering and then writing about the lives and struggles of others in his detailed and insightful biographies. As Kaplan noted in Back Then, the Jewish people are “a stubborn, perdurable people,” and it is from his Jewish background that he drew his perseverance. After his childhood, he adopted the same fierce will to endure that he came to admire in his ancestors. Kaplan personified the historical ability of the Jewish people to overcome adversity and to appreciate and to find meaning in struggle.

Bibliography

Bernays, Anne, and Justin Kaplan. Back Then: Two Literary Lives in 1950’s New York. New York: Perennial, 2003. The chapters of this memoir are written alternately by Kaplan and his wife. The only true collaboration is in the introduction. The book offers an informative yet entertaining and detailed account of their lives and backgrounds. Note the differences in writing styles and voice.

Fox, Margalit. "Justin Kaplan, Prize-Winning Literary Biographer, Dies at 88." New York Times. New York Times, 4 Mar. 2014. Web. 5 Aug. 2015.

Levine, Bettijane. “In Others’ Words.” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1992. Kaplan explains his dream job, editing Bartlett’s.

Sachs, Andrea. “Looking Back: A ’50s Feeling.” Time, June 24, 2002. Profile of Kaplan and his wife Bernays, including details on their romance, their marriage, and their writing life.