Alcoholic Authors, Dramatists, Poets and Songwriters in America

While most students learn that Stephen Foster died young as the result of a fall he suffered while drunk, the information is often left out of the biographies of other famous authors. Writers such as Eugene O'Neill,  F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Cleever became reformed alcoholics however their health had already been seriously damaged by liquor.

Alcoholic Authors in the 19th and 20th Century

Among the famous American authors, dramatists, poets and songwriters who suffered from alcoholism in the 19th and 20th century are:

• Author Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941
• Author James Rufus Agee, (1909-1955)
• Author Ambrose Bierce, (1842-1914)
• Author Raymond Chandler, (1888-1959)
• Author Stephen Crane, (1871-1900)
• Author Theodore Dreiser, (1871-1945)
• Author F. Scott Fitzgerald, (1896-1940)
• Author Sinclair Lewis, (1885-1951)
• Author Jack London, (1876-1916)
• Author William Seabrook, (1886-1945)

• Dramatist Eugene O'Neill, (1888-1953)

• Humorist Finley Peter Dunne (1869-1936)

• Poet Hart Crane, (1899-1932)
• Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, (1892-1950)
• Poet Joaquin Miller, (1841-1913)
• Poet Edgar Allen Poe, (1809-1849)
• Poet George Sterling, (1869-1926)

• Songwriter Stephen Foster, (1826-1864)

Insights Reflecting Alcoholism Problems in Creative Works

The reasons why alcoholism affected these creative people is varied however there is some reflection of how they dealt with it in their work:

Cup of Fury , an anti-drinking tract by Upton Sinclair, the non-drinking son of an alcoholic father.

John Barleycorn was an autobiographical work by Jack London, who tells how he started drinking at age five when carrying pail-loads of beer to his step-fathers in the fields.

Babylon Revisited , a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which has been called one of the greatest stories about alcoholism in American fiction.

Anecdotes Related to Alcoholism

There are many stories that have been told about how alcoholism affected its victims.  Agee's heavy drinking caused his first heart attack in 1951, followed by another which caused his death. Chandler died of pneumonia after years of many hospitalizations for problems cause by his heavy drinking. It is said that Faulkner never wrote while drinking but used alcohol as an escape valve from the pressures of his daily life.

Alcoholism was not considered a disease when most of of these creative people were suffering from it. In spite of their heavy drinking, they produced some of the most notable work in American drama, literature and song writing.