Frank Luther Mott (April 4, 1886 – October 23, 1964) was an American academic, historian andjournalist, who won the 1939Pulitzer Prize for History for Volumes II and III of his series,A History of American Magazines.
Mott was born inRose Hill, Iowa. His parents were Mary E. (Tipton) and David Charles Mott, publishers of the weeklyWhat Cheer, Iowa Patriot.[1] The Mott family owned a print shop inKeokuk County. He was a practicingQuaker. When he was 10 his father began publishing theAudubon, IowaRepublican and he assisted in the typesetting.
He did the first three years of his college education atSimpson College and then completed his bachelor's degree at theUniversity of Chicago. Mott attendedColumbia University starting in 1917, earning his M.A. in 1919.Carl Van Doren, mentioned in the Franklin section below, was teaching at Columbia during this time, and the two may have met then. Mott earned his Ph.D. in 1928 from the University of Iowa while a professor there.[2] He married Vera Ingram. His daughter was archaeologistMildred Mott Wedel.[3]
Mott became professor of English at theUniversity of Iowa in 1921, rising to associate professor and of journalism and director of the school of journalism in 1925. He continued at UI until he was appointed Dean of theUniversity of Missouri (MU)'s School of Journalism in 1942.[4]
Mott may have coined the termphotojournalism in 1924.[5] He was influential in the development of photojournalism education: the first photojournalism class was taught at UI during his tenure, and the first photojournalism program, directed byClifton C. Edom, started at MU in 1943 upon his request.
His textbook onAmerican Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States through 250 years 1690 to 1940[6] (1941 and later revised editions covering through 1960) was the standard resource in courses on the history of journalism. In reviewing the book,The New York Times said it is "sure to remain as one of the most valuable and informative resources on the story of our daily press."[7] Mott was the chief of the journalism section of the American Army University of Biarritz and was sent to Japan to advice General MacArthur's staff on magazines and newspapers.[8]
Mott regularly set his students an unexpected challenge: suddenly, midway through a lecture, staging an attempted murder of himself, before assigning his students the challenge of writing up what they had seen happen.[9]
Mott was a lifelong lover of magazines, his father having hoarded them in the house.[10] His monumental series,A History of American Magazines, started as PhD work at Columbia in the late 1920s. It was projected as six volumes. However, other projects, such asAmerican Journalism, derailed his progress. Four volumes ofAmerican Magazines carried the history up to 1905. Mott died after starting work on Volume V: 1905–1930. Volume Vdoes not extend the history past 1905; it includes 21 of a projected 36 sketches of individual magazines, intended as supplementary material to the 1905-1930 history. It also includes an index for all five volumes. Presumably, Volume VI would have covered the history from 1931 to Mott's present day, plus additional supplementary materials.
Volumes II and III ofA History of American Magazines (1938) won the 1939Pulitzer Prize for History, and Volume 4 won theBancroft Prize in 1958.
Mott served as president ofKappa Tau Alpha in 1937–1939. He died inColumbia, Missouri on October 23, 1964.[11]
In 1936, Mott collaborated with Chester E. Jorgenson, Instructor in English at the University of Iowa to publishBenjamin Franklin: Representative Selections, With Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes for theAmerican Book Company as part of the American Writers Series.[12]
On April 1, 1937,Carl Van Doren wrote to Mr. Mott:
18 West 13 Street, New York
Dear Mr. Mott: It has just occurred to me that I have never written to you to tell you what an admirable book I think you and Mr. Jorgenson have done in your Franklin. A volume of selections seldom manages to be also a quintessence of scholarship on its subject. Yours does. I am particularly under obligation to you because I am doing a large-scale biography of Franklin, a narrative which will be as dramatic, I hope, as he deserves, and yet will truly embody the recent riches of monographic matters which his earlier biographers have not had to help them. Your volume is my constant handbook, and many of my notes are written in the margins of my copy.
Gratefully, Carl Van Doren[13]
The work in progress became Van Doren's landmarkBenjamin Franklin, published in 1938, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.[14]
In 1962, Mott publishedTime Enough, a collection of autobiographical essays.[15] The manuscript and galley proofs for this work are at the State Historical Society of Missouri.
