Bok, Edward W.
Edward William Bok in the frontispiece to his autobiography,
A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After
Edward William Bok (9 October 1863 – 1930) was a Dutch born American editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He was editor of the Ladies Home Journal for thirty years. Bok is credited with coining the term, living room as the name for room of a house that had commonly been called the parlor or drawing room.
[edit] Life and career
He was born in Den Helder, The Netherlands. At the age of six, he immigrated to Brooklyn, New York, USA, and became an office boy with the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1876. In 1882, he began work with Henry Holt and Company, and then, in 1884, he became involved with Charles Scribner's Sons, where he eventually became its advertising manager. From 1884 until 1887, Bok was the editor of The Brooklyn Magazine, and in 1886, he founded The Bok Syndicate Press.
After moving to Philadelphia in 1889, he obtained the editorship of Ladies Home Journal, when its founder and editor, Louisa Knapp Curtis, stepped down to a less intense role at the popular, nationally-circulated publication. It was published by Cyrus Curtis, who had an established publishing empire that included many newspapers and magazines.
In 1896 Bok married Mary L. Curtis, the daughter of Louisa and Cyrus Curtis. [1] She shared her family's interest in music, cultural activities, and philanthropy and was very active in social circles.
During his editorship, the Journal became the first magazine in the world to have one million subscribers and it became very influential among readers by featuring informative and progressive ideas in its articles. The magazine focused upon the social issues of the day. It also became the first magazine to refuse patent medicine advertisements.[2] In 1919, after thirty years at the journal, Bok retired.
In 1923, Bok proposed the American Peace Award[3].
In 1924 Mary Louise Bok founded the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, which she dedicated to her father, Cyrus Curtis, and in 1927, the Boks embarked upon the construction of Bok Tower Gardens, near their winter home in Mountain Lake Estates, Lake Wales, Florida, which was dedicated on February 1, 1929 by the president of the United States, Calvin Coolidge. Bok Tower sometimes is called a sanctuary and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Landmark. Bok is used as an example in Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People."[4]
Bok is credited with coining the term living room as the name for room of a house that was commonly called a parlor or drawing room. This room had traditionally been used only on Sundays or for formal occasions such as the displaying of deceased family members before burial. Bok believed it was foolish to create an expensively furnished room that was rarely used, and promoted the new name to encourage families to use the room in their daily lives. He wrote, " We have what is called a 'drawing room'. Just whom or what it 'draws' I have never been able to see unless it draws attention to too much money and no taste..." [5]
His 1920 autobiography, The Americanization of Edward Bok, won the Gold Medal of the Academy of Political and Social Science and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. Edward W. Bok died on January 9, 1930.[6]
[edit] Published works
- Successward (1895)
- The Young Man & The Church (1896)
- Her Brother's Letters (1906)
- Why I Believe in Poverty (1915)
- The Americanization of Edward Bok (1920)
- A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After, edited by John Louis Haney (1921)
- Two Persons (1922)
- A Man from Maine (1923)
- Twice Thirty (1925)
- Dollars Only (1926)
- You: A Personal Message (1926)
- America Give Me a Chance (1926)
- Perhaps I Am (1928)
[edit] References
- Hamersly, Lewis R. (1904). Who's who in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporaries. L.R. Hamersly & Co.. p. 66. http://books.google.com/books?id=HFADAAAAYAAJ&dq=cyrus+curtis&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0.
- 30. Cleaning Up the Patent-Medicine and Other Evils. Bok, Edward William. 1921. The Americanization of Edward Bok
- http://americanpeaceaward.org/index.html
- He appears in Part Two, Chapter 4 ("How to Become a Good Conversationalist").
- Anonymous. The Living Room is Born. Ladies Home Journal, 125(6) 12.
- Anonymous (4 October 1948). "Ladies' Choice" (in English). Time. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,799257,00.html. Retrieved 24 May 2009.
[edit] External links
| Persondata |
| Name |
Bok, Edward W. |
| Alternative names |
|
| Short description |
|
| Date of birth |
9 October 1863 |
| Place of birth |
|
| Date of death |
1930 |
| Place of death |
|
