Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.Join Britannica's Publishing Partner Program and our community of experts to gain a global audience for your work!
Matthew Josephson, (born Feb. 15, 1899, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.—died March 13, 1978, Santa Cruz, Calif.), U.S. biographer whose clear writing was based on sound and thorough scholarship.
As an expatriate in Paris in the 1920s, Josephson was an associate editor of Broom (1922–24), which featured both American and European writers. He had believed that the American artist who wished to avoid being absorbed by industrialism had no choice but exile; soon, however, Josephson returned to America to watch what he described as the battle between mechanism and ideas. After coming close to a breakdown while working on Wall Street, he went back to writing and became an editor for the Paris-based magazine transition (1928–29).
His first book was a well-researched and authoritative biography of Emile Zola, Zola and His Time: The History of His Martial Career in Letters (1928). Other highly praised biographies followed. His interest in 19th-century French literature appears in such works as Victor Hugo (1942) and Stendhal (1946), which helped to regenerate American interest in Stendhal’s work. He addressed another favourite topic, American economics, in what is perhaps his best known work, The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901 (1934). The book chronicles the lives of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and other barons of industry in the late 19th century. A late work is The Money Lords: The Great Finance Capitalists, 1925–1950 (1972).
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
New York City 1960s overviewAt the start of the decade, Paul Simon, Neil Diamond, and Lou Reed were among the hopeful young songwriters walking the warrenlike corridors and knocking on the glass-paneled doors of publishers in the Brill Building and its neighbours along Broadway. Only Diamond achieved significant success in…
New York 1950s overviewAt the start of the 1950s, midtown Manhattan was the centre of the American music industry, containing the headquarters of three major labels (RCA, Columbia, and Decca), most of the music publishers, and many recording studios. Publishers were the start of the recording process, employing “song…
New York City 1970s overviewIn the early 1970s the city of New York lapsed into bankruptcy, and the music business completed its move west, centring on Los Angeles. When New York City’s musical resurgence occurred at the end of the decade, it owed little to the tradition of craftsmanship in songwriting, engineering, and…