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Catherine Drinker Bowen

Author profile

born

January 19, 1897 in Haverford, Pennsylvania, The United States

died

November 01, 1973

gender

female

genre

Biographies & Memoirs

About this author

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Catherine Drinker Bowen was born as Catherine Drinker on the Haverford College campus on January 1, 1897, to a prominent Quaker family. She was an accomplished violinist who studied for a musical career at the Peabody Institute and the Juilliard School of Music, but ultimately decided to become a writer. She had no formal writing education and no academic career, but became a bestselling American biographer and writer despite criticism from academics. Her earliest biographies were about musicians. Bowen did all her own research, without hiring research assistants, and sometimes took the controversial step of interviewing subjects without taking notes.

combine editions
Books by Catherine Drinker Bowen

Average rating: 3.88 · 433 ratings · 74 reviews · 18 distinct works

	Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787 3.92 avg rating — 346 ratings — published 1966 — 11 editions	My rating:
	John Adams and the American Revolution 3.96 avg rating — 25 ratings — 4 editions	My rating:
	Yankee from Olympus: Justice Holmes and His Family 3.74 avg rating — 27 ratings — published 1944 — 4 editions	My rating:
	The Lion and the Throne: The Life and Times of Sir Edward Coke, 1552-1634 4.29 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 1990	My rating:
	Most Dangerous Man in America: Scenes from the Life of Benjamin Franklin 3.56 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 1974 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man 3.11 avg rating — 9 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	Family Portrait 3.33 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1970	My rating:
	Beloved Friend: The Story of Tchaikowsky and Nadejda Von Meck 4.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1975 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Friends and Fiddlers: Memoirs 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2011 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Biography: The Craft And The Calling 2.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:

More books by Catherine Drinker Bowen…

Quotes by Catherine Drinker Bowen

“Writers seldom choose as friends those self-centered characters who are never in trouble, never make mistakes, and always count their change as it is handed to them.”
― Catherine Drinker Bowen

tags: books , writing

9 people liked it

“Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living.”
― Catherine Drinker Bowen

tags: life , writing

3 people liked it

“It is a great, a pleasant thing to have a friend with whom to walk, untroubled, through the woods, by the stream, saying nothing, at peace--the heart all clean and quiet and empty, ready for the spirit that may choose to be its guest.”
― Catherine Drinker Bowen, Friends and Fiddlers: Memoirs

tags: age , friends , music , nature , peace