Justin Kaplan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author best known for his biographies of literary greats Mark Twain and Walt Whitman and muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens, died on March 2 in Cambridge, Mass. He also served as editor of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.
A Harvard graduate, Kaplan won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1967 for his first book, “Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain,” which also received a National Book Award.
He was known to many at the Nieman Foundation as a close neighbor and friend. Kaplan and his wife Anne Bernays, a novelist and Nieman writing instructor, opened their home to host numerous Nieman gatherings through the years. Besides Anne, he is survived by his three daughters, Susanna Donahue, Hester Kaplan and Polly Kaplan, and six grandchildren.
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A Harvard graduate, Kaplan won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1967 for his first book, “Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain,” which also received a National Book Award.
He was known to many at the Nieman Foundation as a close neighbor and friend. Kaplan and his wife Anne Bernays, a novelist and Nieman writing instructor, opened their home to host numerous Nieman gatherings through the years. Besides Anne, he is survived by his three daughters, Susanna Donahue, Hester Kaplan and Polly Kaplan, and six grandchildren.
Learn more
