Jean Gould

Biographer

  • Born: May 25, 1919
  • Birthplace: Greenville, Ohio
  • Died: February 8, 1993
  • Place of death: Perrysburg, Ohio

Biography

Jean Gould was born in Greenville, Ohio, in 1919. She attended the University of Michigan and after two years transferred to the University of Toledo, where she received her bachelor’s degree in 1937. Gould worked as a freelance writer for nearly all of her career. In addition, she worked in the National Education Office of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union between 1952 and 1962 and was a researcher for the National Opinion Research Center.

Gould specialized in writing biographies for both children and adults. Several of her biographies were about poets, including Robert Frost: The Aim Was Song (1964), The Poet and Her Book: A Biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1969), and Amy: The World of Amy Lowell and the Imagist Movement (1975). She also wrote a children’s book about poet Emily Dickinson, Miss Emily (1946), as well as adult biographies of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and labor leader Walter Reuther.

The Poet and Her Book: A Biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of her most acclaimed biographies. The book won the Radio Network Book Review’s Oppie Award for best biography of the year, the Ohioana Library Association Award, and the American Association of University Women Special Award. Amy: The World of Amy Lowell and the Imagist Movement was nominated for a National Book Award.

Gould lectured throughout the United States for many years and served on the advisory board of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for twenty-five years. She died of cancer of the jaw in 1993.