Bernard Augustine DeVoto (January 11, 1897 - November 13, 1955) was an American historian and author who specialized in the history of the American West. He was born in Ogden, Utah. He attended the University of Utah for a few years, but interrupted his education to serve in World War I. After the war, he attended Harvard University.

He began his career as an English instructor at Northwestern University and began to write articles and novels, which often provoked controversy for their liberal viewpoint. Sometimes he used the pseudonyms John August and Cady Hewes. After several years, DeVoto resigned from Northwestern and moved to Massachusetts with his wife. He began to devote himself to serious writing along with part-time instructing at Harvard. He wrote occasional article for periodicals such as Harper's Magazine.

DeVoto became an authority on Mark Twain and eventually served as a curator for Mark Twain's papers at Harvard. He moved to New York City, where he was the editor for the Saturday Review of Literature .

His son, Mark DeVoto, is a prominent music theorist and professor at Tufts University.

Selected works of Bernard DeVoto

• Mark Twain's America (1932)
• Mark Twain in Eruption (1940)
• Mark Twain at Work (1942)
• The Year of Decision: 1846 (1942)
• The Portable Mark Twain (1946)
• Across the Wide Missouri (1947)
• The Course of Empire (1952)
• The Journals of Lewis and Clark, editor (1953)

Sources

• Stegner, Wallace E. 2001, The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard DeVoto.

External links

• Utah History: Bernard DeVoto
• "FBI was out to get freethinking DeVoto", from High Country News