Alexander Woollcott

Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine and a member of the Algonquin Round Table.

Alexander Woollcott was born in an 85room house, a vast ramshackle building in Colts Neck Township, New Jersey. Known as the North American Phalanx, it had once been a commune where many social experiments were carried on in the mid19th century, some more successful than others. When the Phalanx fell apart after a fire in 1854, it was taken over by the Bucklin family, Woollcotts maternal grandparents. Woollcott spent large portions of his childhood there among his extended family. His father was a neerdowell Cockney who drifted through various jobs, sometimes spending long periods away from his wife and children. Poverty was always close at hand. The Bucklins and Woollcotts were avid readers, giving young Aleck a lifelong love of literature, especially the works of Charles Dickens. He also resided with his family in Kansas City, Missouri, where he attended Central High School, where a teacher, Sophie Rosenberger, reportedly inspired him to literary effort and with whom he kept in touc

Source: Wikipedia