Edmund Morris (writer)

Edmund Morris (born May 27, 1940) is a British-American writer best known for his biographies of United States Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

Morris was born in Nairobi, Kenya, the son of South African parents May (Dowling) and Eric Edmund Morris, an airline pilot. He received his early, British-influenced education in Kenya and then studied music, art, and literature at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. Dropping out of college in 1961, he worked in the retail advertising department of a menswear store in Durban. Most of the brochures and advertisements he designed and wrote were for the Zulu market, and he later claimed that this early training in "making words move merchandise" was invaluable to the formation of his literary style. Moving to Britain in 1964, he abandoned dreams of becoming a concert pianist and was employed as a copywriter in the London office of Foote, Cone & Belding, an American advertising agency. In 1966 he married Sylvia Jukes, an English teacher and writer, and emigrated with her to the United States two years later.

Morris's first book, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, was the first volume of what would eventually become a trilogy on the life of the 26th president—it won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and the 1980 National Book Award for biography.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan became President of the United States and was impressed by a reading of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon and Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin urged Reagan aides to appoint Morris as the president's official biographer. Morris met with Reagan on several occasions in 1981–1983, but was reluctant to put aside work on Theodore Rex, the second volume of his life of Roosevelt. However, in 1985 Morris recognized that Reagan had become a figure of high historical importance, and signed a $3 million contract with Random House to write his authorized biography. He reached a private agreement with the president and first lady that granted him regular interviews with them and their children, as well as unlimited access to the White House, by means of a pass that made him a non-governmental observer of the administration. This "fly-on-the-wall" privilege was made doubly unusual by Reagan's willingness to let Morris write his biography without any editorial control.

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