Donald Frank Rose
Donald Frank Rose (June 29, 1890 – February 7, 1964) was an American newspaper columnist, lecturer, and author. He was born in Street, Somerset, England, to Frank Hodson Rose and Mary Anne Harriette Searle Rose. In 1908, at age 18, he moved to the United States.
Rose originally planned to become a minister in the New Church, following the example of his great-grandfather. He studied at the Academy of the New Church and its affiliated college, but after two years he left that path “for the good of the church” and turned to teaching and writing to support his growing family. He married Marjorie Wells on June 13, 1914, and they had twelve children.
He began his career teaching high school English, later adding Latin and Hebrew. He continued his education at Columbia and Oxford. In 1924 he left teaching to become a freelance writer. In 1925 he started his own magazine, Stuff and Nonsense, with lighthearted pieces about everyday life. In 1927, Stuff and Nonsense became a weekly column for the Sunday Public Ledger in Philadelphia, and later moved to the daily Evening Public Ledger.
When the Philadelphia Ledger ceased publication in 1942, Rose’s column moved to The Philadelphia Bulletin, where it appeared on the Op-Ed page and sometimes as unsigned editorials. He kept writing the column until his death. Between 1927 and 1951 he published eight books, including collections of his columns. After World War II, he reported on the aftermath of the destruction, which led to his book Diary of a Postwar Correspondent and left a lasting impact on him.
In his later years, Rose taught journalism at Columbia University, Penn State, Temple University, and the Charles Morris Price School of Advertising and Journalism. He died on February 7, 1964, in Meadowbrook, Pennsylvania, at age 73. One of his 86 grandchildren is Neil Genzlinger, a culture critic for The New York Times.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 07:33 (CET).