User:Orangerie429/Robert L. Wolf

Robert L. Wolf

Robert Leopold Wolf (1895-1970) was born in Chicago, Illinois on January 10, 1895 to Carrie Mendelbaum Wolf and Leopold Jacob Wolf. He was the older of two sons, with a younger brother James (“Bibs”), and his father was a partner in the firm of Mandelbaum, Wolf, and Lang, innovators in electric inter-urban railroads. Wolf prepared at University School in Cleveland, Ohio before entering Harvard College in 1911. He was awarded a scholarship for two years, served as President of the Harvard Equal Suffrage League in 1914-1915, and excelled at mathematics, economics, and writing. He graduated summa cum laude in 1915 and worked as a statistical clerk at the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT & T) from 1915-1916.

Wolf married Anne Page on April 8, 1916 and was an assistant instructor in economics at Harvard from 1916 to 1917. Their daughter, Barbara Page Wolf, was born on December 23, 1917. Wolf attended Columbia Law School for a semester in 1918 before joining the United States Army. From March 1918 to July 1919 he was stationed in France as an artillery officer with the rank of 2nd Lieutenant, and from August 1919 to March 1920 he worked for the U. S. Tariff Commission, compiling a study of reciprocity between the United States and Canada which was later published as one of the tariff commission reports.

Wolf grew disillusioned with this work and decided that he should instead focus his attention on writing. He moved to New York to work on the editorial staff of liberal journal The Freeman between March and May 1920 and also did freelance editorial work in New York, California, and Connecticut. He and Page divorced in May 1920, and on March 21, 1921 Wolf remarried, to Genevieve Taggard. Together they had a daughter, Mary Alta Wolf (later renamed Marcia), born on December 13, 1921.

Wolf published a collection of poems, After Disillusion (1923) and a novel, Springboard (1927). Although both books were well received in literary circles, they did not sell well. His articles, poems, and reviews were published in journals including The Nation, The Liberator, The Workers Monthly, Poetry, and The Dial, but he struggled financially and relied on his parents for assistance.

In the midst of marital discord with Taggard, Wolf moved to Paris in 1926 to write. He lived in a hotel on the Rue Lacépède and socialized with other Americans then in Paris, including Ernest Hemingway. A long-standing proponent of polyamory, he had affairs with various women, including Katherine Larkin and the painter Andrée Ruellan.

Upon his return to New York, Wolf’s behavior was said to be increasingly erratic. Following an incident in which he threatened to kill his father and a gun was found among his belongings, he was committed to Mattawean State Hospital in 1928 or 1929 on charges of attempted homicide. He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and spent the rest of his life institutionalized.

Robert L. Wolf died in 1970.

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