Dahlberg, Edward

(1900–77)

   American writer. Dahlberg was born in Boston, the illegitimate son of a hairdresser. After an unsettled childhood, he and his mother settled in Kansas City, but he was later transferred to an orphanage in Cleveland. After high school he took a series of dead-end jobs until 1925 when he travelled to Europe and witnessed the rise of Nazism. Back in the United States he briefly became involved with the American Communist party. His novels are largely autobiographical. The first, Bottom Dogs (1929), which carried an introduction by D.H. Lawrence, was a description of his early life in Kansas City. His reflections on the Jewish orphanage in Cleveland are contained in From Flushing to Calvary (1932) and the unsettled existence of his early adult life in Because I Was Flesh (1964). His European travels are reflected in Those Who Perish (1934) and the Communist party of the Thirties is described in The Confessions of Edward Dahlberg (1971). His other works include Do These Bones Live? (1947), the Flea of Sodom (1950) and Alms for Oblivion (1967). His long correspondence with Sir Herbert Reed is recorded in Truth Is More Sacred: A Critical Exchange in Modern Literature (1961).