Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen (January 1, 1897 – November 1, 1973) was an American writer best known for her biographies. She won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1958. Bowen was born Catherine Drinker on the Haverford College campus in Haverford, Pennsylvania, 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. A number of Bowen's books were chosen as Book of the Month Club selections, including Beloved Friend (1937), Yankee from Olympus (1944) and John Adams and the American Revolution (1950).In 1958 she won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction for The Lion and the Throne: The Life and Times of Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), a biography of the prominent lawyer of Elizabethan England. That same year, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society. In addition, Ms. Bowen received the 1957 Philadelphia Award and the 1962 Women's National Book Association award. Her last book, Family Portrait, received critical acclaim, and was a Literary Guild selection. During her lifetime, she was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Philadelphia Award. In 1962, she became the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Lehigh University.Bowen was an active amateur chamber music player, often playing violin with members of her family and with friends. She recorded her experiences playing chamber music in her book Friends and Fiddlers. She was one of the founding members of the Amateur Chamber Music Players (today Associated Chamber Music Players), an international organization encouraging amateur music-making.At the time of Bowen's death in 1973, she was working on a biography of Benjamin Franklin; the unfinished book was published posthumously as Scenes from the Life of its subject. She died in Haverford and is buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.