Carter, John Stewart, 1911-1965

John Stewart Carter, (b. March 26, 1912, d. October, 1965), was born and lived most of his life in Oak Park, Illinois. Carter was an author who published two short stories, several poems and a successful novel titled Full Fathom Five. When Carter was a boy the Hemingway family were neighbors and his father was a colleague of Dr. Hemingway. Influenced by the life of Ernest Hemingway, both John Stewart Carter and his brother Albert Howard Carter aspired to become authors. John Stewart Carter was a poet, author and a professor of English at Chicago Teachers College.

Carter achieved his Bachelor's Degree from the years 1927-1931 at Northwestern University, where he studied English and wrote several pieces for the student literary publication, A Miscellany. Carter also studied English at Harvard University from 1931-1932. He then came back to Chicago to work on his Masters Degree and Ph.D., both in English, from 1935 to 1941at the University of Chicago. Carter studied James Shirley and wrote a critical edition of his seventeenth century play, The Traitor.

While completing his studies at the University of Chicago, Carter worked at the Chicago YMCA College as a night reference librarian. In the last year of his research, he was hired at Chicago's Teachers College. He worked at the Teachers College as a professor of English until his death in 1965. During World War II, he served a five-year tour of duty in the Navy as a lieutenant and resumed his position at Chicago's Teachers College upon his return.

Carter was married to a woman named Marie and they had two daughters named Elizabeth and Ann. In 1956, Carter applied for and received a Ford Foundation Grant to research and write a critical work about Edgar Allen Poe. The family followed Carter to Iran in 1961 and 1962 where he was a Fulbright Professor of American Literature at the University of Tehran.

Carter wrote short many stories during his educational career and in the 1950's and 1960's he began to write poetry as well. Carter's only novel, Full Fathom Five, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1964. The novel is about an upper class Chicago family and is told through the perspective of the youngest member of the clan. It is comprised of three parts, the first two of which were published first as short stories in The Kenyon Review under the titles "The Keyhole Eye" and "To a Tenor Dying Old" in the autumn of 1962 and 1963 respectively.

Full Fathom Five was well received and critically acclaimed. Carter received a literary fellowship from Houghton Mifflin for the publication. Carter died only a year after the publication of his first novel in October 1965 after struggling with his health and an eye condition for much of his life. After Carter's death, a selection of his poetry was published titled, Poems: An Handful with Quietness.

From the guide to the Carter, John Stewart. Papers, 1922-1976, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)