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Personalities

    Louis Bromfield (1896 - 1956)

    Pulitzer Prize Winning Author

    Agricultural Pioneer

    The comment under Louis Bromfield's photo in the 1914 Mansfield yearbook was prophetic: 

"Louis has a highly artistic temperment.  He boasts of graduating with nineteen points."

    Bromfield soon entered World War I, where he served as an ambulance driver in France.  He developed a fondness for France during that time.  After the War, Bromfield returned to the States and began writing in New York City.  When a few works were successful, Bromfield moved his family to France where they remained for 16 years.

   In 1927, Bromfield was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his novel Early Autumn.  Many of his works included memories and experiences from his formative years in the Mansfield area.  During his time in France, he enjoyed working with plants and bringing a rundown farm back to life.

   As the threat of World War II approached, Bromfield hated to leave his beloved home in France.  But he didn't want his family to go through the hardships of war.  He decided to move his family back to Richland County.

   He bought four farms south of Mansfield and named them Malabar, after a favorite place in India.  Once there, Bromfield turned his attention to agriculture, both in his writings and his practices.  He was concerned with the erosion of good farm soil and experimented with new methods of planting crops.  The local farmers scoffed at him in those days, but today those methods are commonplace all over the world.

   Bromfield knew many Hollywood stars, as some of his novels were made into screenplays.  The most notable event to happen at Malabar Farm was the 1945 marriage of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  Bromfield was 59 when he died in 1956.