Charlton Ogburn

Charlton Ogburn, Jr. (15 March 1911, Atlanta, Georgia – 19 October 1998, Beaufort, South Carolina) was a journalist and author of memoirs and non-fiction works. He was also a well-known advocate of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship. He wrote over a dozen books and numerous magazine articles.

Life

Ogburn was the son of lawyer Charlton Greenwood Ogburn and writer Dorothy Ogburn née Stevens and the nephew of the sociologist William Fielding Ogburn. He was raised in Savannah and New York, graduated from Harvard in 1932 and wrote and worked in publishing. During World War II he joined military intelligence, leaving with the rank of captain. He returned to the US to begin a career with the State Department. After the success of his story The White Falcon (1955) he quit the government to write full-time in 1957. He married Vera M. Weidman in 1951. He was among the first State Department officials to explicitly oppose the growing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war.^[1]

Ogburn's papers are archived at Emory College.^[2].

Works

The Marauders

The Marauders (1959), his first person account of the Burma Campaign in World War II, was be his best-known work during his lifetime; it was later made into the film Merrill's Marauders (1962).

The following quotation, or variants of it, is frequently misattributed to Petronius. In fact it comes from a magazine article he wrote an article published by Harper's Magazine in 1957 about his time with Merrill's Marauders:

We trained hard ... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.

In full, it reads as follows:

We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organising, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganising; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.

The Winter Beach

His account of his travels along the largely deserted north eastern shore in The Winter Beach is considered a classic of nature-writing. Roger Tory Peterson wrote, "In The Winter Beach, literary courage, eloquence and wisdom have, I think, brought about a triumph." (Stewart Udall)"Ogburn has written a most extraordinary book...he is a very sensitive, reflective writer in the Thoreauvian tradition."

Oxfordian theory

Ogburn is, however, probably most well known for several books and articles on the Shakespeare authorship question, continuing the passion of his parents, who had written several books on the topic, including This Star of England (1952). Ogburn Jr's last and most influential book, The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Man and the Myth (1984) led directly to the making of a 1987 Frontline documentary on the authorship question, narrated by Al Austin, and a 1987 Moot court case on the authorship question sponsored by American University which over a thousand members of the public attended. Three supreme court justices -- John Paul Stevens, Harry Blackmun, and William J. Brennan -- heard arguments in favor of the orthodox view of Shakespearean authorship and the Oxfordian theory attributing the works to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550–1604). Although the justices held in favor of the traditional account of authorship, Stevens later authored an influential article, "The Shakespeare Canon of Statutory Construction," in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review (1991), supporting Ogburn's position.

Ogburn's book also inspired a succession of influential articles in The New Yorker (1988), Atlantic Monthly (1991), and Harpers Magazine (1999) and stimulated a reinvigoration of the Oxfordian theory, as well as a nationally broadcast, 3-hour teleconference on the topic, Uncovering Shakespeare: An Update, with moderator William F. Buckley, Jr..

See also

• Colonel Charles N. Hunter author of Galahad (San Antonio, TX: Naylor Co., 1963), a book about Merrill's Marauders and the commanding officer frequently mentioned in Ogburn's book, The Marauders.

References

1. ^ Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, The first Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis. Harvard University Press, 2007, 342. The author's refer to Ogburn's early critique of the assumptions guiding U.S. policy as "prescient."
2. ^ http://marbl.library.emory.edu/findingaids/browse_results?q=findingaids/content&id=ogburn543_104352

External links

• Biography at the Ogbourne Chronicles websites.

Persondata
Name	Ogburn, Charlton
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	15 March 1911
Place of birth
Date of death	19 October 1998
Place of death