Lewis Gannett

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Lewis Gannett was an American writer and critic. He was born in 1891 and died in 1966. Gannett was the author of several books, including Sweet Land (1934), The Living One, Magazine Beach, The Siege, and two Millennium novels: Gehenna and Force Majeure.

Lewis Gannett was known for being a liberal writer for The Nation , as well as for spending twenty-seven years (1929-56) as the daily book reviewer for the New York Herald-Tribune . Gannett calculated that during that period he had reviewed about eight thousand books in about six thousand columns. His review in 1932 of Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck helped launch the future Nobel Prize-winning author's career. [1] Gannett also championed the writing of William Faulkner and John Dos Passos.

Gannett and his wife, Ruth, lived on a farm called Cream Hill in West Cornwall, Connecticut; he described his farm in his last book, Cream Hill: Discoveries of a Weekend Countryman. [2]


  1. William L. Shirer, 20th Century Journey, vol. 3, A Native's Return, 1945-1988 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), pp. 316-17.
  2. William L. Shirer, 20th Century Journey, vol. 3, A Native's Return, 1945-1988 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), pp. 317-18.

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