John Dos Passos was born in Chicago, Illinois, on January 14, 1896. He was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos, a lawyer, and Lucy Addison (Sprigg) Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. Dos Passos received a first-class education at The Choate School in Connecticut, where he was known by the name John Roderigo Madison. He then traveled with his tutor through Europe, studying classical art, architecture, and literature.
Dos Passos attended Harvard University and, after graduating in 1916, traveled to Spain to continue his studies. In 1917, he volunteered for the Sanitary Squad Unit 60 of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, serving alongside Edward Estlin Cummings and Robert Hillyer. By the late summer of 1918, he had completed a draft of his first novel and was stationed in Pennsylvania with the United States Army Medical Corps. After the war, he studied anthropology at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Considered one of the Lost Generation writers, Dos Passos published his first novel, "One Man's Initiation: 1917," in 1920, followed by the antiwar story "Three Soldiers," which brought him considerable recognition. His 1925 novel "Manhattan Transfer" was a success. In 1937, Dos Passos returned to Spain with Ernest Hemingway, but his changing views on the Communist movement marked the end of his friendship with Hemingway and Herbert Matthews.
Dos Passos published the first book of the "U.S.A." trilogy in 1930, which is considered one of his most important works. He was invited to Rome in 1967 to accept the prestigious Antonio Feltrinelli Prize, recognizing his significant contribution to the literary field. Between 1942 and 1945, Dos Passos worked as a journalist covering World War II, and in 1947, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Tragedy struck when an automobile accident killed his wife, Katharine Smith, and cost Dos Passos the sight in one eye. He remarried to Elizabeth Hamlyn Holdridge in 1949, with whom he had an only daughter, Lucy Dos Passos, born in 1950. Over his long and successful career, Dos Passos wrote forty-two novels, as well as poems, essays, and plays, and created more than four hundred pieces of art.
The John Dos Passos Prize is a literary award given annually by the Department of English and Modern Languages at Longwood University, recognizing American creative writers who display characteristics of Dos Passos' writing: an intense and original exploration of specifically American themes, an experimental approach to form, and an interest in a wide range of human experiences. Dos Passos created his own cover art for his books, influenced by modernism in 1920s Paris. He died in Baltimore, Maryland. Spence's Point, his Virginia estate, was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1971.