Margaret Widdemer, a poet and novelist was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, in 1884 and grew up in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Received several prizes. She won the Pulitzer Prize (known then as the Columbia University Prize) in 1919 for her collection The Old Road to Paradise. In her poems, Widdemer addresses the social problems of her day-such as child labor-and pays strict attention to traditional poetic forms. "But when your heart is tired and dumb, your soul has need of ease, There's none like the quiet folk who wait in libraries- The counselors who never change, the friends who never go, The old books, the dear books that understand and know!"

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Margaret Widdemer was born on September 30th, 1884 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Asbury Park, New Jersey. She graduated from the Drexel Institute Library School in 1909. Margaret first gained recognition with her poem 'The Factories', and its subject of child labor. In 1919, she married Robert Haven Schauffler, a widower five years her senior who was an author and cellist and published widely on poetry, travel, culture, and music. That same year she won the Pulitzer Prize (then still known as the Columbia University Prize) for this collection 'The Old Road to Paradise'. The award was shared with Carl Sandburg for 'Cornhuskers'. Margaret's career was long and prolific covering poetry, adult and children's fiction and some self-help guidance books. Her friendships covered such authors as Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Thornton Wilder, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Margaret Widdemer died in New York City, on July 14th, 1978.