Author Philip Hamburger was born on July 2nd, 1914 in Wheeling, West Virginia. His family later moved to New York City, where Hamburger was educated in the public schools. He received a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University (1935) and a M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (1938). In 1939 he joined the staff of The New Yorker, where he worked for virtually his entire career.
Hamburger left the magazine briefly from 1941-1943, when he served as a writer in the U.S. government's Office of Facts and Figures and Office of War Information. He then rejoined The New Yorker, and during 1945 was the magazine's European war correspondent. During the 1950s-1990s, Hamburger contributed essays to nearly every section of The New Yorker, including Talk of the Town, Profiles, A Reporter at Large, and Onward and Upward with the Arts . He was the magazine's music critic from 1948-1949, and wrote its television column from 1949-1955. His popular Notes for a Gazetteer essays chronicled his visits to over fifty American cities during the years 1959-1964. Several pieces from this series were collected and published as An American Notebook (1965). Other collections of Hamburger's New Yorker writings include The Oblong Blur and Other Odysseys (1949), Mayor Watching and Other Pleasures (1958), Our Man Stanley (1963) and Curious World (1987). In 1952 Hamburger published J.P. Marquand, Esq., an acclaimed biography based on his New Yorker profile of the American novelist.
Philip Hamburger married the writer Edith Iglauer in 1942. The couple had two sons, Richard and Jay. They divorced in 1966. Hamburger married Anna Walling Matson in 1968.
From the guide to the Philip Hamburger papers, 1924-2004, 1942-1991, (The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.)
