James Gould Cozzens was born in Chicago in 1903. He attended the Kent School in Connecticut and left Harvard early because of illness and debt. He is known for philosophical, meticulously written books about professional men torn between duty and their personal lives.
His novels include The Last Adam (1933), The Just and the Unjust (1942), Guard of Honor (1948) and the 1957 bestseller By Love Possessed. Guard of Honor won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize. He died in Stuart, Florida, in 1978.