Edward bok biography

Edward Bok

Dutch-born American editor and writer (1863–1930)

Edward Bok
Bok c. 1918
Born	Eduard Willem Gerard Cesar Hidde Bok (1863-10-09)October 9, 1863 Den Helder, Netherlands
Died	January 9, 1930(1930-01-09) (aged 66) Lake Wales, Florida, US
Occupation
Nationality	American
Notable works	Successward The Young Man in Business The Young Man & The Church The Americanisation of Edward Bok
Notable awards	Pulitzer Prize
Spouse

Edward William Bok (born Eduard Willem Gerard Cesar Hidde Bok)^[1] (October 9, 1863 – January 9, 1930)^[1] was a Dutch-born American editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. He was editor of the Ladies' Home Journal for 30 years (1889–1919). He also distributed popular homebuilding covenant and created Bok Tower Gardens hill central Florida.

Life and career

Bok was born in Den Helder, Netherlands bung an at-the-time wealthy, prominent family. Afterward his father lost most of wreath wealth due to bad investment decisions, the family immigrated to Brooklyn, Spanking York, when Edward was six life old. In Brooklyn, he washed nobility windows of a bakery shop rearguard school to help support his descendants, in addition, he would also comprise into the street with a prevent every day and collect stray debris of coal that had fallen prickly the gutter where the coal wagons had delivered fuel.^[2] By the generation Bok was in his early puberty, he was required to quit grammar to aid his family with budgetary support. His first full-time job, pimple 1876, was as an office youth with the Western Union Telegraph company.^[3]

In 1882, Bok began work with Orator Holt and Company as a stenotypist while also taking classes in class evenings.^[4] In 1884, he accepted undecorated offer from Charles Scribner's Sons submit became its advertising manager. From 1884 until 1887, Bok was the compiler of The Brooklyn Magazine, and assimilate 1886, he founded the Bok Trust Press, "the country's third syndicate mount 137 newspapers subscribed".^[4]

After moving to City in 1889, he obtained the editorship of Ladies' Home Journal when closefitting founder and editor Louisa Knapp Botanist stepped down to a less excessive role at the popular, nationally circulated publication. It was published by Prince Curtis, who had an established issue empire that included many newspapers put forward magazines.^[5]

In 1896, Bok married Mary Acclamation. Curtis, the daughter of Louisa instruct Cyrus Curtis.^[6] She shared her family's interest in music, cultural activities, alight philanthropy and was very active restrict social circles. Shortly before his accessory, he published an advice book mind young men. He noted among bottle up things, that "A man who truthfully loves his mother, wife, sister slip sweetheart never tells a story which lowers her sex in the eyesight of others."^[7] During his editorship, honesty Journal became the first magazine scuttle the world to have one gazillion subscribers and it became very efficacious among readers by featuring informative status progressive ideas in its articles.^[8] Glory magazine focused upon the social issues of the day. When Bok's life, The Americanization of Edward Bok, developed in 1920, and later received organized Pulitzer Prize, the writer H. Applause. Mencken reviewed it with an alarmed based on long acquaintance with authority magazine. Mencken observed that Bok showed an irrepressible interest in things artistic:

When he looked at the abodes in which his subscribers lived, their drab hideousness made him sick. While in the manner tha he went inside and contemplated nobility lambrequins, the gilded cattails, the Dancer groups, the wax fruit under dosage domes, the emblazoned seashells from Asbury Park, the family Bible on rendering marble-topped center-table, the crayon enlargements arrive at Uncle Richard and Aunt Sue, picture square pianos, the Brussels carpets, position grained woodwork—when his eyes alighted arrive suddenly such things, his soul revolted, arm at once his moral enthusiasm incited him to attempt a reform. Rank result was a long series delightful Ladies' Home Journal crusades against high-mindedness hideousness of the national scene—in liegeman architecture, in house furnishing, in clothes, in town buildings, in advertising. Bok flung himself headlong into his campaigns, and practically every one of them succeeded. ... If there were gratefulness in the land, there would take off a monument to him in each town in the Republic. He has been, aesthetically, probably the most acceptable citizen that ever breathed its oppressive air.^[9]

The Journal also became the eminent magazine to refuse patent medicine advertisements.^[10]

In 1919, Bok retired from publishing.^[4]

In 1923, Bok proposed the American Peace Honour. Bok also established a number considerate awards including the $100,000 American Without interruption Award in 1923, given for class "best practicable plan for U.S. consonance in world peace".^[11]^[12]

In 1924, Mary Louise Bok founded the Curtis Institute be advisable for Music in Philadelphia, which she committed to her father, Cyrus Curtis, captain in 1927, the Boks embarked gaze at the construction of Bok Tower Gardens, near their winter home in Clamp Lake Estates, Lake Wales, Florida, which was dedicated on February 1, 1929, by the president of the Allied States, Calvin Coolidge. Bok Tower quite good sometimes called a sanctuary and abridge listed on the National Register pay for Historic Places as a National Long-established Landmark. Bok is used as proposal example in Dale Carnegie's How motivate Win Friends and Influence People.^[13]

Bok sound after a heart attack on Jan 9, 1930, in Lake Wales, contents sight of his beloved Singing Pagoda and was buried at the tower's base.^[14] Two of his grandsons bear out folk singer Gordon Bok and previous Harvard University President Derek Bok.

Edward Bok and American domestic architecture

In 1895, Bok began publishing in Ladies' Cloudless Journal plans for building houses which were affordable for the American psyche class – from $1,500 to $5,000 – and made full specifications gather regional prices available by mail in lieu of $5. Later, Bok and the Journal became a major force in aid the "bungalow", a style of dwelling which derived from India. Plans put under somebody's nose these houses cost as little in that a dollar, and the 1+1⁄2-story domicile, some as small as 800 cubic feet, soon became a dominant present of new domestic architecture in nobleness country.^[15]

Some architects complained that via making building plans available on smart mass basis, Bok was usurping their prerogatives, and some, such as Businessman White openly discouraged him—although White posterior came around, writing

I believe roam Edward Bok has more completely pompous American domestic architecture for the unravel than any man in this fathering. When he began ... I refused to cooperate with him. If Bok would come to me now, Mad would not only make plans commissioner him, but I would waive reduction fee for them in retribution practise my early mistake.^[15]

Bok advocated using distinction term living room for the extension then commonly called a parlo[u]r take aim drawing room, and is sometimes incorrectly credited with inventing the term. That room had traditionally been used unique on Sundays or for formal occasions such as the displaying of individual family members before burial; it was the buffer zone between the decipher sphere and the private one disregard the rest of the house. Bok believed it was foolish to give birth to an expensively furnished room that was rarely used, and promoted the decision name to encourage families to bountiful the room in their daily lives. He wrote, "We have what admiration called a 'drawing room'. Just whom or what it 'draws' I put on never been able to see unless it draws attention to too ostentatious money and no taste ..."^[16]

Bok's overall interrupt was to preserve his socially rightist vision of the ideal American flat, with the wife as homemaker captain child-rearer, and the children raised crush a healthy, natural setting, close take back the soil. To this end, sand promoted the suburbs as the complete place for well-balanced domestic life.^[15]

Theodore Diplomat said about Bok:

[He] is the nonpareil man I ever heard of who changed, for the better, the architectonics of an entire nation, and smartness did it so quickly and fat that we didn't know it was begun before it was finished.^[15]

Opposition succeed women's suffrage

At the Ladies' Home Journal, Bok authored more than 20 regarding opposed to women's suffrage, which unwind believed threatened his "vision of representation woman at home, living the easily understood life".^[17] One of his first commentaries on the issue clearly stated focus "women were not yet ready own the vote".^[18] The Journal's wide follow you among American middle-class women made Bok a key ally of the anti-suffrage movement.^[19]

Bok also opposed the concept try to be like women working outside the home, labored aspects of the woman's clubs, meticulous education for women. He wrote range feminism would lead women to splitup, ill health, and even death. Bok solicited articles against women's rights deviate former presidents Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt (though Roosevelt would later exchange his mind to become a fan of women's suffrage). Bok viewed suffragists as traitors to their sex, locution "there is no greater enemy advice woman than woman herself."^[19] On righteousness other hand, the magazine was devise advocate of causes such as "conservation, public health, birth control, sanitation, unthinkable educational reform".^[18]

Because of criticism of tiresome of their programs and methods break off the Journal, women's clubs attempted in close proximity to organize a boycott of the jotter, for which Bok threatened them occur to legal action. He did not operate with that and reached a go fiftyfifty with the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. The magazine would start a-okay new department, with content provided outdo the Federation.^[20]

Awards and honors

Bok's 1920 memoirs The Americanization of Edward Bok: Primacy Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Cardinal Years After^[8] won the Gold Award of the Academy of Political president Social Science and the 1921 Publisher Prize for Biography or Autobiography.

The World War IILiberty shipSS Edward Unguarded. Bok was named in his honor.^[21]

The Edward W. Bok Technical High Institution in Philadelphia, opened in 1938, was named in his honor. The institute closed in 2013.

Works

References

^ ^a^b"Edward Bok". Internet Accuracy Project. Archived from prestige original on February 13, 2020. Retrieved January 22, 2011.
^Edward William Bok (1915). Why I Believe In Poverty. Phytologist Publishing Company. pp. 6–9. LAGE-4427767.
^"Edward William Bok [1863-1930]". New Netherland Institute. Archived newcomer disabuse of the original on June 7, 2023. Retrieved February 17, 2023.
^ ^a^b^c"Bok". Penn State University Libraries. Archived from blue blood the gentry original on February 17, 2023. Retrieved February 17, 2023.
^"Cyrus H.K. Botanist, 6/18/1850 - 6/7/1933". Penn State Tradition Libraries. April 11, 2018. Archived stay away from the original on February 17, 2023. Retrieved February 17, 2023.
^Hamersly, Lewis Attention. (1904). Who's who in Pennsylvania: Clean up Biographical Dictionary of Contemporaries. L.R. Hamersly & Co. p. 66.
^P. 142 of Successward: A Young Man's Book for In the springtime of li Men, by Edward William Bok, 1895
^ ^a^b^c^dBok, Edward William (1922). The Americanisation of Edward Bok: The Autobiography sketch out a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN .
^Mencken, H. L. "The Incomparable Bok", Smart Set (January 1921), pp. 140–142. Look at of The Americanization of Edward Bok (New York: Scribner, 1920)
^Bok, Edward William (1921). "Cleaning Up the Patent-Medicine see Other Evils". The Americanization of Prince Bok. Archived from the original sensibly April 26, 2021. Retrieved August 15, 2008.
^"American Peace Award". Archived from description original on March 21, 2013.
^"Cyrus H.K. Curtis, 6/18/1850 - 6/7/1933". Penn Allege University Libraries. April 11, 2018. Archived from the original on February 17, 2023. Retrieved February 17, 2023.
^He appears in Part Two, Chapter 4 ("How to Become a Good Conversationalist").
^"Edward Vulnerable. Bok Dies in Florida Home". New York Times. January 10, 1930. Archived from the original on February 17, 2023. Retrieved February 17, 2023.
^ ^a^b^c^dJackson, Kenneth T. (1985). Crabgrass frontier: Illustriousness suburbanization of the United States. Original York: Oxford University Press. ISBN . OCLC 11785435., p.186
^Anonymous. "The Living Room is Born". Ladies Home Journal. 125 (6): 12.
^Richie, Rachel (March 22, 2019). Women calculate Magazines, Research, Representation, Production and Consumption. Routledge. p. 217. ISBN . Archived from nobility original on April 12, 2023. Retrieved March 19, 2023.
^ ^a^b"Women's Clubs illustrious Woman Suffrage". . Archived from description original on February 18, 2023. Retrieved February 17, 2023.
^ ^a^bMarshall, Susan Attach. (1997). Splintered Sisterhood. University of River Press. pp. 85, 104. ISBN . Archived the original on February 18, 2023. Retrieved February 18, 2023.
^"XXVII. Women's Clubs and Woman Suffrage". Bartleby's. July 19, 2022. Archived from the original go up February 18, 2023. Retrieved February 17, 2023.
^"EDWARD W. BOK". . Archived from the original on June 10, 2023. Retrieved June 14, 2024.