Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born on the 6th of January 1931 in the Bronx. His parents were Rose and David Richard Doctoraw, second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish extraction who named him after Edgar Allan Poe.
E. L. Doctorow published his second novel Big As Life in 1966 while serving as editor-in-chief at Dial Press from 1964 to 1969. He subsequently refused to allow that book to be republished before leaving publishing to pursue a writing career full-time.
The Book of Daniel by E. L. Doctorow is a freely fictionalized consideration of the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. This novel was completed in 1971 while he served as Visiting Writer at the University of California Irvine.
E. L. Doctorow won the National Book Critics Circle Award three different times for Ragtime Billy Bathgate and The March. He also received the PEN/Faulkner Award for both Billy Bathgate and The March.
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow died of lung cancer on the 21st of July 2015 aged 84 in Manhattan. He is interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.