Adamič, Louis 1899-1951

Variant names
Dates:
Birth 1899-03-23
Death 1951-09-04
Americans
Slovenian, English

Biographical notes:

Political writer and literary figure.

From the description of ALS, 1939 March 21, Milford, New Jersey, to Edward Hoyt. (Cornell University Library). WorldCat record id: 63935383

Adamic was an author deeply concerned with American immigrants and their experiences in the "melting pot", and was the first editor of Commond Ground.

From the description of Louis Adamic papers, 1848-1951 (bulk 1921-1951). (Princeton University Library). WorldCat record id: 122561726

Social critic and writer.

From the guide to the Louis Adamic letter to Sidney Hook, 1938, (The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.)

Author Louis Adamic was born in Slovenia, and immigrated to the United States at the age of fourteen. He worked odd jobs in New York City, became a naturalized citizen and then a soldier, and settled in San Jose, California. He wrote fiction and translated Slavic works into English, eventually contributing stories and articles to American Mercury. His most characteristic works were about the immigrant's experience in America, combining memoir, journalism, and a political agenda to raise awareness of ethnic values and show the secondary consequences of immigration.

From the description of Louis Adamic letters, 1934-1938. (Pennsylvania State University Libraries). WorldCat record id: 62589893

Louis Adamic (1899-1951) was born in 1898 in Slovenia and immigrated to the United States in 1913. He became a US citizen and served on the Western Front during World War I. After the war, he worked as a journalist and professional writer in work focused on the immigrant experience, publishing Dynamite (1930), which looked at class and labor violence; Laughing in the Jungle (1932), an autobiography; and The Native’s Return (1934), an account of his return to Yugoslavia (the research for which may have been that referred in the letters below). This account led to his appointment to the Executive Board of the Foreign Language Information Service. Adamic leaned left politically and his membership in organizations with known Communist sympathies led to surveillance by the FBI between 1941 and 1958 (see the Louis Adamic Collection in the Immigration History Research Center, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota). During the postwar period, Adamic criticized the rightward direction of US policy, publishing Dinner at the White House ” (1946). Adamic died under mysterious circumstances in 1951: he was found shot to death at his home in Milford, New Jersey.

From the guide to the Louis Adamic Correspondence (MS 172), 1932-1933, (University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries. Special Collections Dept.)

Author.

From the description of Letters, 1936-1950. (University of Iowa Libraries). WorldCat record id: 233125259

Links to collections

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Information

Subjects:

  • Authors, American
  • American fiction
  • Antisemitism
  • British Americans
  • Children of immigrants
  • Chinese Americans
  • Communism
  • Czech Americans
  • Danish Americans
  • Dutch Americans
  • Editors
  • Emigration and immigration law
  • Finnish Americans
  • French Americans
  • German Americans
  • Greek Americans
  • Hungarian Americans
  • Japanese Americans
  • Japanese Americans
  • Jewish question
  • Labor and laboring classes
  • Lithuanian Americans
  • Male authors, American
  • Naturalization
  • Polish Americans
  • Refugees
  • Scottish Americans
  • Slovak Americans
  • Swedish Americans
  • Swiss Americans
  • Ukrainian Americans
  • World War, 1939-1945
  • Yugoslav Americans
  • Japanese Americans

Occupations:

  • Authors

Places:

  • United States (as recorded)
  • Yugoslavia (as recorded)