Allan Eugene Updegraff

Biography

Novelist, poet, editor and journalist Allan Eugene Updegraff was born in Grinnell, Iowa on 14 February, 1883, the oldest of four boys born to William R. and Laura A. Updegraff. Laura passed away sometime between 1889 and 1900. Updegraff's parents were farmers and had operated farms near Grinnell and Washington, Iowa and later Springfield, Missouri. Two of his brothers, Lawrence Vale (1884-1961) and Herbert H. (1889-1961), went on to have successful newspaper careers, while his third brother, William David (1885-1960), became a California rancher. Updegraff attended, but did not graduate from Yale University. Before his writing career bloomed, Updegraff worked as an editor of a South Chicago newspaper, investigator for a charitable organization, editor of the Yale Monthly and maintenance man for Upton Sinclair's utopian Helicon Home Colony in Englewood, New Jersey. It was at the latter that Updegraff caught the writing bug. In 1907 The New York Times reported that Updegraff and a friend intended to travel on foot to San Francisco where they hoped to find work on a merchant ship bound for the Fiji Islands. The two hoped to achieve their search for a workless and poetic society on $20 apiece, panhandling and maybe a little larceny. It is not known by this writer how far the couple got. A short list of Uupdegraff's works may include "A Gentleman from Jupiter" (1916), "Second Youth: Being, in the Main, Some Account of the Middle Comedy in the Life of a New York Bachelor: A Novel" (1917), " A Novel of Modernistic Truth and Intruding War" (1918), "Whatever We Do" (1927) and "Grantham's Moor,: And Collected Poems, Some old" (1960). In 1908 Updegraff married Canadian author ("Weeds" 1923) Edith Summers (1884-1956)), whom he'd met while she was Upton Sinclair's secretary. Two children, Barbara and Ivor, were born to this union before they divorced sometime around 1913. Updegraff later wed fashion consultant and freelance writer Dora (Doris) Loues Miller. Starting in 1923, and only interrupted by the war years, Updegraff and his wife would spend the majority out of every year in Paris, France, the fashion capital of the world. Allan Eugene Updegraff died in Paris on 7 December, 1965. He was survived by his wife Dora who passed away in Paris three years later. His son Ivor H. Updegraff (1913-2006) went on to be a chemistry professor and scientist. The source material for this bio primarily came from: Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad, 1960, 1963-1974, US Census records and several newspaper articles, including Dora Loues Miller's obituary in the 17 February, 1968 edition of the New York Times.