Cobb, Humphrey

(1899–1944)

   Humphrey Cobb enlisted in the Canadian army in 1916 and was gassed and wounded in combat in World War I. After the war, he traveled in Europe and Africa before returning to the United States, where he found employment writing advertising copy. His literary reputation depends almost entirely on his novel PATHS OF GLORY (1935), which was dramatized for the stage by Sidney Howard. A second novel, None But the Brave, was serialized in Collier’s Weekly in 1938 but was never published in book form. Just as the title of Paths of Glory had been borrowed from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751), the title for None But the Brave was borrowed from John Dryden’s poem “Alexander’s Feast” (1697): “Happy, happy, happy pair! None but the brave . . . deserves the fair. ” Cobb died at Port Washington, Long Island, New York, in 1944.