John D. Newsom, author, editor and
former national director of the Federal Writers Project of the old Works
Progress Administration, died Saturday of a heart attack aboard the Home liner
Roma on the way to Italy. Mr. Newsom was about 60 years old and recently had
resided on a farm In Bucks County, Pa.
Mr. Newsom was born in Shanghai of
American descent. He was reared in France and attended Cambridge University,
England. For a time he was an anthropologist in Melanesia and later he lived in
Morocco. He served as a captain in the British Army in France in World War I
and as a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy in World War II.
In the Navy he served in the
Pacific and as a liaison officer with our armies In Northern Africa and
Southern France. His writings included a number of novels about the French
Foreign Legion, including Legionnaires, Drums of the Legion, Cockney of
the Legion, London Legionnaire and Wiped Out published in the Twenties and
Thirties. From one of his stories was made a motion picture, Trouble in
Morocco produced in 1937.
Mr. Newsom became Michigan director
of the Federal Writers Project in 1938 and national director in 1939. He held
the latter post for several years. Under him a series of encyclopedias of
useful information about our various states was published.
After World War II, Mr. Newsome
served Harcourt Brace & Co., Inc., book publishers here, as an associate
editor, for a few years. He had intended to do literary work with Arthur
Koest1er, the novelist, In Europe.
His widow survives.
