Archibald MacLeish was born in Glencoe, Illinois in 1892. He is the author of numerous poetry collections and prose works, including Tower of Ivory (1917); Happy Marriage and Other Poems (1924); and Conquistador (1932), winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He also received the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and Bollingen Prize for his Collected Poems, 1917-1952 (1952); an Academy Award for his work on the screenplay for the film The Eleanor Roosevelt Story; and a third Pulitzer Prize for his verse play J. B. (1958). MacLeish served as Librarian of Congress from 1939 to 1944, while at the same time serving as director of the War Department’s Office of Facts and Figures. He was also appointed assistant director of the Office of War Information, where he specialized in propaganda. MacLeish retired from politics in 1949 to serve as Harvard’s Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, a position he held until 1962. Archibald MacLeish died in 1982.
Audio Recordings of Archibald MacLeish
- Archibald MacLeish reading his poems with comment backstage in the Coolidge Auditorium, May 13, 1963
- Archibald MacLeish reading his poems in the Coolidge Auditorium, March 29, 1976