Dos Passos, John

American author born in Chicago as John Roderigo Dos Passos to a wealthy lawyer of Portuguese descent. As a child, Dos Passos travelled extensively with his parents in Mexico and Europe, and he was educated on the East Coast and in England. At the age of fifteen, he was admitted to Harvard where he mixed in intellectual circles that included his friend E.E. Cummings. He graduated in 1916, and the following year his work was included in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. He then travelled to Spain to study architecture, but signed up for the army when the United States joined the First World War. Like Cummings and Hemingway, another friend, he served in the Ambulance Corps. He remained in Europe after the war, mixing on the fringes of the American colony in Paris. When he returned to the United States, he mainly worked as a journalist.