Pease, Lute, 1869-1963

Lucius "Lute" Curtis Pease (1869-1963) was a reporter, prospector, magazine editor, and editorial cartoonist.

Lute Pease (1869-1963) was a reporter, prospector, editor, and Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist who participated in the Klondike gold rush, ran a hotel in Nome, Alaska, built The Pacific monthly into a prominent magazine, and drew political cartoons for the Newark (N.J.) evening news over a forty year career.

Lute Pease (1869-1963) was a reporter, prospector, editor, and Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.

Lucius Curtis Pease (1869-1963), aka Lute Pease, was an American editorial cartoonist and journalist during the first half of the 20th century.

Lucius Curtis Pease (1869-1963), aka Lute Pease, was an American editorial cartoonist and journalist during the first half of the 20th century.

He was a miner in Alaska for 5 years before beginning a career in art. He was an illustrator for the Oregonian and famously interviewed Mark Twain.

Biography

Lucius Curtis Pease (March 27, 1869-August 16, 1963), born in Winnemucca, Nevada and raised by grandparents in Charlotte, Vermont from the age of five after the death of his parents, made his mark on the world in many fields. Reporter, prospector, editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, his many careers spanned much of the century and took him from the frontier of territorial Alaska to the editorial rooms of the Newark (N. J.) Evening News. Known by the nickname Lute 1, Pease had come back to the West from Vermont after graduating from high school. Although he never fulfilled his aspiration to study art in Paris, his artistic and literary bent found many outlets for expression. Beginning as a reporter and artist for the Portland Oregonian in the 1890s, he was deeply involved with literature and journalism for the rest of his life. Even during the five years he spent hunting gold and adventure in the Yukon and Alaska, he enlivened the letters and diaries he sent home to relatives with his quick wit and his sketches of people and places. Upon his return from the North, he joined the staff of The Pacific Monthly, a literary magazine in Portland, eventually rising to the post of editor. Before the magazine's absorption by Sunset Magazine in 1912, Pease's intelligent and independent editing made it a journal of progressive reform and literary excellence. Following several years at loose ends, he joined the Evening News of Newark, New Jersey, in 1914. For the next forty years, he remained at the paper, capping a distinguished career with the receipt of a Pulitzer Prise in 1949. From his retirement in 1954 until his death in 1963, he devoted himself to fostering his skills as a painter of portraits and landscapes.

The collection consists of letters written by Lute's parents to each other during their courtship and during his father's pioneering in Nevada, letters between Lute and various members of his family including his sisters throughout his life, Pease's diaries during his sojourn in Alaska, literary manuscripts authored by Pease, Charles Warren Stoddard, Charles Erskine Scott Wood, and others, some correspondence about literary magazines in the West, and various biographical materials about the Pease family. At the end of the collection are a number of clippings, printed versions of editorial cartoons, Pease's scrapbook and other printed items and ephemera.

1 This nickname is used throughout the collection to distinguish him from his father, with whom he shared first and middle names.