Randolph Bourne Biography

An essayist and intellectual who lived in Greenwich Village, Randolph Bourne is an early figure of America’s “bohemian” counterculture. Randolph Bourne was maimed by forceps during his birth, giving him a disfigured face; spinal tuberculosis at age 4 left him a hunchback. Bourne graduated from Columbia University in 1913 and joined the staff of The New Republic, where he made a name for himself as left-leaning essayist and intellectual. He was an outspoken critic of World War I even after America entered the war, a position which made him highly unpopular. He died in the influenza epidemic of 1918, shortly after the war ended. His best-known work is Youth and Life (1913).