Nicer the Second Time Around

Anyone who ever sat through a lecture in English 140b, "The Age of Johnson," had to expect it. Last week, the awards committee down at Columbia made it official, awarding Walter Jackson Bate '39, Lowell Professor of the Humanities, a Pulitzer Prize for his massive biography, "Samuel Johnson."

For Bate, whose lectures are said to be about as close to a dinner-time conversation with the Good Doctor as any Harvard student will ever find, the Pulitzer was his second. In 1964 he garnered his first Pulitzer for a biography of John Keats.

"I like it better the second time around. It's all the nicer because you don't expect it," Bate said on hearing of the award.

He should have expected it, though. In January the work won the National Book Critics Award, and earlier this month earned the National Book Award in the biography category.

Bate is the first writer ever to win Pulitzers for two biographies of non-Americans.

The award to Bate was not the only Pulitzer doled out to a Harvard professor, however. Alfred D. Chandler Jr. '40, Straus Professor of Business History, also walked off with a Pulitzer in history for his work, "The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business."

Chandler, who spent 15 years researching the book, also won the Bancroft Award in History earlier this month for the work.