- Source: Vincent Sheean
James Vincent Sheean (December 5, 1899, Pana, Illinois – March 16, 1975, Arolo, Frz. of Leggiuno, Italy) was an American journalist and novelist.
Career
Sheean's most famous work was Personal History (New York: Doubleday, 1935).
It won one of the inaugural National Book Awards: the Most Distinguished Biography of 1935.
Film producer Walter Wanger acquired the political memoir and made it the basis for his 1940 film production Foreign Correspondent, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Sheean served as a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune during the Spanish Civil War.
Sheean wrote the narration for the feature-length documentary Crisis (1939) directed by Alexander Hammid and Herbert Kline. He translated Ève Curie's biography of her mother, Madame Curie (1939), into English.
Sheean wrote Oscar Hammerstein I: Life and Exploits of an Impresario (1955) as well as a controversial biography of Dorothy Thompson and Sinclair Lewis, Dorothy and Red (1963).
He studied at the University of Chicago, becoming part of a literary circle which included Glenway Wescott, Yvor Winters, Elizabeth Madox Roberts and Janet Lewis while he was there.
Vincent and Diana Forbes-Robertson Sheean were friends of Edna St. Vincent Millay and her husband, Eugen; they spent time together on Ragged Island off the coast of Maine during the summer of 1945.
Books
Partial list, including both fiction and otherwise:
New Persia (1927) - Iran
Anatomy of Virtue - (1927) - Psychological romance novel of an American girl who marries an English nobleman.
American Among the Riffi (1926)
Gog and Magog
The Tide (1933) - "If a Messiah Came to Your Town Today, What Would You Think? What Would You Do?".
Personal History: Youth and Revolution: the Story of One Person's Relationship to Living History (1935)
Sanfelice (1936) - Historical novel set in Naples
The Pieces of a Fan (1937)
A Day of Battle (1938) - Historical novel based on the French victory at Fontenoy in Flanders on May 11, 1745
Not Peace but a Sword (1939) - Europe. Personal account of events in Prague, Madrid, London, Paris and Berlin during the 12 fateful months between March 1938 and March 1939.
Lead, Kindly Light: Gandhi & the Way to Peace, Random House (1949). Can Gandhi's non-violent approach lead the world away from violence as the way to settle disputes?
Between the Thunder and the Sun (1943) Account of being in England during the Battle of Britain.
Notes
References
Further reading
Cohen, Deborah. Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took On a World at War (2022) American coverage of 1930s in Europe by John Gunther, H. R. Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean, and Dorothy Thompson.excerpt
Dave, Anish. Seeking to Understand the World: Literary Journalism of Vincent Sheean (2023). Vernon Press. [1]
Cott, Nancy F. Fighting Words: The Bold American Journalists Who Brought the World Home Between the Wars (2020). Basic Books. [2]
Hamilton, John M. Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting (2009). Louisiana State University Press. [3]
External links
Biography of Vincent Sheean
Vincent Sheean at IMDb
Vincent Sheean at Traces.org
Sheean's "Holy Land" chapter remains vital to understanding Palestinian conflict
Vincent Sheean papers at Syracuse University
Guide to the Vincent Sheean and Ruth Falkenau Correspondence 1919-1986 at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center