“Editors are the immemorial adversaries of writers, because most editors are editors because they wanted to be writers and failed, and they instinctively hate those who wanted to be writers and succeeded.”.“One of your first jobs, as you write for money, will be to get rid of your vocabulary.”.“If you wish to write great literature you are very stupid to read my books, because I do not, cannot, and would not write great literature.”.“Few human beings are proof against the implied flattery of rapt attention.”.“Characterization is an accident that flows out of action and dialogue.”.“Boy meets girl girl gets boy into pickle boy gets pickle into girl.”.The editors of the company in the 1940s were Allan Wilson and Aaron Moses (“Moe”) Shapiro. Woodford founded Jack Woodford Press in the 1930s and the company's work was distributed by Citadel in the 1940s. Woodford's only child from his marriage, Louella Woolfolk (who wrote under the pen name Louella Woodford) was also a published author who, at the age of 18, wrote a 273-page novel titled Maid Unafraid that was published in 1937 by Godwin. He also accompanied Winston Churchill when the former Prime Minister visited New York City. Woodford wrote a piece that was published in Pound’s early Exile magazine. Mencken, writer/satirist James Branch Cabell, novelist Sherwood Anderson, composer George Antheil, and poet Ezra Pound. He gave a firsthand account to the Chicago newspaper the Herald-Examiner and described the event in Chapter 21 of his autobiography.Īmong the many famous contemporaries Woodford befriended, the most notable are H. Woodford witnessed the Eastland disaster where the steamer ship rolled over in the Chicago River and killed 845 people. Woodford, always physically vibrant, thought of his father as a hypochondriac. Calomel ( mercurous chloride) was a popular medicine at the time and one the doctor himself used to excess. He later taught diagnosis at Rush Medical College, before dying at the age of forty-nine, likely from mercury poisoning. His father was a doctor who started a private practice in Sioux City, Iowa, eventually moving it to Chicago. Despite his general hatred of organized religion, Woodford joined the Freemasonry organization and remained a lifelong member. Nettie was a practicing member of Christian Science but was unable to bring Jack into the fold. He was raised in well-to-do circumstances by his grandmother Annette (of Welsh stock) whom he called 'Nettie'.

Woodford grew up in Chicago when the dominant form of transportation was horse-drawn carriage.

Vice Versa by Jack Woodford