Eugene Jolas

John George Eugène Jolas (October 26, 1894 – May 26, 1952) was a writer, translator and literary critic. Early life John George Eugène Jolas was born October 26, 1894, in Union Hill, New Jersey (what is today Union City, New Jersey). His parents, Eugène Pierre and Christine (née Ambach) had immigrated to the United States from the Rhine borderland area between France and Germany several years earlier. In 1897 the family later returned to Forbach in Elsass-Lothringen (today in French Lorraine), where Jolas grew up, and which had become part of Germany in 1871 following the Franco-Prussian War. In 1909, he moved on his own to New York City, where he learned English while attending DeWitt Clinton Evening High School and earning a modest living as a deliverer. Career After schooling, Jolas worked in Pittsburgh as a newspaper journalist for the German-language Volksblatt und Freiheits-Freund and the English-language Pittsburgh Sun.