Hutchins Hapgood

Autobiography of a Thief. By Hutchins Hapgood

Hutchins Hapgood (May 21, 1869, Chicago - November 19, 1944, Provincetown, MA) was an American journalist, author and anarchist Hapgood grew up in Alton, IL, where his father was a wealthy manufacturer of farming equipment. After a year at the University of Michigan, he transferred to Harvard University, where he took a B. A. in 1892 and earned his Masters in 1897. Two of the intervening years were spent studying sociology and philosophy at the universities of Berlin and Freiburg, Germany. At first, he became a teacher of English composition at Harvard and the University of Chicago, but was eventually inspired by his older brother, Norman to pursue a career in journalism. He obtained his first employment with the New York Commercial Advertiser (later known as the New York Globe). His mentor there was Lincoln Steffens, the muckraking reporter. On June 22, 1899, he married Neith Boyce, Steffens' assistant and a journalist in her own right. In 1904, when the Advertiser was revamped as the Globe, he went back to Chicago for a time and became the drama critic for the Chicago Evening Post. Returning to New York, he spent much of his career as an editorial writer for the New York Evening Post, the Press, and the Globe. Following the deaths of his father in 1917 and his eldest son Boyce (in the 1918 flu epidemic), Hapgood's career began to decline. A few years later, general disillusionment over the decadence of the post-war world led him to retire. Hapgood died on November 19, 1944, in Provincetown, and was buried in the family plot in East Cemetery, Petersham, Massachusetts.