Robert Nathan

"For the British Intelligence Officer, see Robert Nathan (Indian civil servant)."

Robert Gruntal Nathan (January 2, 1894–May 25, 1985) was an American novelist and poet.

Nathan was born into a prominent New York family. He was educated in the United States and Switzerland and attended Harvard University for several years beginning in 1912. It was there that he began writing short fiction and poetry. However, he never graduated, choosing instead to drop out and take a job at an advertising firm to support his family (he married while a junior at Harvard.) It was while working in 1919 that he wrote his first novel—the semi-autobiographical work "Peter Kindred"—which was a critical failure. But his luck soon changed during the 1920s, when he wrote seven more novels, including "The Bishop's Wife", which was later made into a successful film starring Cary Grant, David Niven, and Loretta Young.

During the 1930s, his success continued with more works, including fictional pieces and poetry. In 1940, he wrote his most successful book, "Portrait of Jennie", about a Depression-era artist and the woman he is painting, who is slipping through time. "Portrait of Jennie" is considered a modern masterpiece of fantasy fiction and was made into a film, starring Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten.

Many of Nathan's stories seem to have an other-worldly air about them, though he was never classed as a writer of science fiction as much as a writer of fantasy.

Mr. Nathan's seventh wife was the British actress Anna Lee, to whom he was married from 1970 until his death. He came from a talented family — the activist Maud Nathan and author Annie Nathan Meyer were his aunts, and the poet Emma Lazarus and Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo his cousins.

Works

*Novels:
** "Peter Kindred", 1919
** "Autumn", 1921
** "The Puppet Master", 1923
** "Jonah", 1925
** "The Fiddler in Barly", 1926
** "The Woodcutter's House", 1927
** "The Bishop's Wife", 1928
** "There Is Another Heaven", 1929
** "The Orchard", 1931
** "One More Spring", 1933
** "Road of Ages", 1935
** "The Enchanted Voyage", 1936
** "Winter in April", 1938
** "Portrait of Jennie", 1940
** "They Went Together", 1941
** "The Sea-Gull Cry", 1942
** "But Gently Day", 1943
** "Journal for Josephine", 1943
** "Mr. Whittle and the Morning Star", 1947
** "Long After Summer", 1948
** "The River Journey", 1949
** "The Innocent Eve", 1951
** "The Married Look", 1951
** "The Train in the Meadow", 1953
** "Sir Henry", 1955
** "So Love Returns", 1958
** "The Rancho of the Little Loves", 1956
** "The Color of the Evening", 1960
** "The Weans", 1960,
** "The Wilderness-Stone", 1961
** "A Star in the Wind", 1962
** "The Devil With Love", 1963
** "The Fair", 1964
** "The Mallott Diaries", 1965
** "Stonecliff", 1967
** "Mia", 1970
** "The Elixir", 1971
** "The Summer Meadows", 1973
** "Heaven and Hell and the Megas Factor", 1975

*Children's books:
** "Journey of Tapiola", 1939
** "Tapiola's Brave Regiment", 1941
** "The Snowflake and the Starfish", 1959
** "Tappy", 1968

*Non-fiction:
** "The Concert", 1940

*Poetry collections:
** "Youth Grows Old", 1922
** "A Cedar Box", 1929
** "Selected Poems", 1935
** "", 1940
** "", 1942
** "Morning in Iowa", 1944
** "The Darkening Meadow", 1945
** "The Green Leaf", 1950
** "The Married Man", 1962
** "", 1973

External links

* [http://www.robertnathanlibrary.com Official Website of Robert Nathan]
* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,788563-1,00.html Article in Time magazine] :