A. J. Liebling Quotes

Liebling was born into a well-off family on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where his father worked in New York's fur industry. His mother, Anna Adelson Slone, was from San Francisco. After early schooling in New York, Liebling was admitted to Dartmouth College in the fall of 1920. His primary activity during his undergraduate career was as a contributor to the Jack-O-Lantern, Dartmouth's nationally known humor magazine. He left Dartmouth without graduating, later claiming he was. He then enrolled in the School of Journalism at Columbia University. After finishing there, he began his career as a journalist at the Evening Bulletin of Providence, Rhode Island. He worked briefly in the sports department of the New York Times, from which he supposedly was fired for listing the name as the referee in results of games. In 1926, Liebling's father asked if he would like to suspend his career as a journalist to study in Paris for a year. In 1961, Liebling published The Earl of Louisiana, originally published as a series of articles in The New Yorker in which he covered the trials and tribulations of the governor of Louisiana, Earl K. Long, the younger brother of the Louisiana politician Huey Long. Liebling died on December 28, 1963, and was buried in the Green River Cemetery, East Hampton, New York.