Coningsby William Dawson

Biography

British novelist and author Coningsby William Dawson was born in High Wycombe, England, UK, the son of Dr. William Dawson, a clergyman and himself a writer. He graduated with a BA from Merton College, Oxford, in 1905. That same year he and his family emigrated to the US. He intended to enter the ministry, and in fact studied for a year at New York City's Union Theological Seminary, but later decided to switch careers and become a writer. From 1905-10 he traveled widely in Canada, and wrote many articles about the country for British newspapers. His home, however, was in Taunton, Massachusetts, where he became the literary adviser to the George Doran Publishing Co. Many of his works were written in his house at Taunton. In 1914 he traveled to Ottawa, Canada, and studied at the Royal Military College of Canada. He was offered a commission in the Royal Canadian Field Artillery upon completion of his training. In 1916 he was commissioned as a lieutenant and sent to the French front. He was wounded twice in combat, and at war's end he returned to the US for two lecture tours. In 1919 he traveled to England to study the problems of postwar reconstruction in Europe. He also undertook an investigation of the state of the war-devastated regions of Central and Eastern Europe at the behest of US President Herbert Hoover. In that same year he married Helen Campbell and they moved to Newark, NJ. He died in Los Angeles, CA, in 1959.