Nationality American Years active 1885–1951 | Name Stephen Bonsal Role Journalist | |
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Died June 8, 1951, Washington, D.C., United States Books Suitors and Suppliants, Unfinished Business, The American Mediterranean, Heyday In A Vanished World, Edward Fitzgerald Beale - a | ||
Stephen Bonsal (March 29, 1865 – June 8, 1951) was an American journalist, war correspondent, author, diplomat and translator, who won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for History.
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Early life
Bonsal was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1865. He was educated at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He continued his studies in Heidelberg, Bonn, and Vienna. He married Henrietta Fairfax Morris in March 1900. Bonsal traveled extensively. He claimed that he had visited all the countries of Europe, Asia (with the exception of Persia), and South America.
Journalist
Bonsal was later a special correspondent of the New York Herald (1885–1907), reporting the development of military conflicts including:
He was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times in 1910–1911.
Diplomat
In 1891-1896, Bonsal served as secretary and chargé-d'affaire of the US diplomatic missions in Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo. He also served for at short time at the U.S. embassy in Madrid.
World War I
During World War I, Bonsal served in the American Expeditionary Forces with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Afterwards, he was President Woodrow Wilson's private translator during the 1919 Peace Conference in Paris.
Later life
Unfinished Business (1944), a diary describing his experiences during the Paris Peace Treaty negotiations and all the Allied infighting and waxing lyrical about the plight of the wounded veterans and their families, won him the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for History.
"No one else has presented the plight of the plain people of Europe, in relation to the strained secrecy of the Conference, and few have written of their agony as does Colonel Bonsal in terms so hardheaded and so poignant" (Time Magazine).
His second son, Philip Bonsal, was a career diplomat.