Chicago lawyer, poet, and author.

Mitchell Dawson was born in Chicago, Illinois on May 13, 1890. He was the son of George Ellis Dawson, a prominent area lawyer, and Eva Manierre Dawson. The Dawson household was filled with music and creative endeavor. His parents met as members of a Beethoven society and his father George kept extensive diaries. His brother Manierre Dawson became an abstract painter of note.

Dawson graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and was admitted to the bar in 1913. He eventually joined his father's successful law firm and continued to practice law until two years before his death in 1956.

Alongside his legal work, Dawson pursued a career in writing, in which he achieved varying levels of success. It was during a stint in the Army Intelligence Corps during World War I while living on the East Coast that Dawson made the acquaintance of such literary figures as William Carlos Williams and Alfred Kreymborg. He wrote poetry during his twenties and published in many of the important journals of the time including Poetry, The Little Review, and Alfred Kreymborg's Others. In addition, he coedited a short lived journal called TNT with Man Ray and Adolph Wolff. Back in Chicago he became involved in the Chicago Literary Renaissance and befriended many writers and publishers, including Maxwell Bodenheim, Harriet Monroe and Margaret Anderson.

Starting in the 1920s, Dawson began writing an amusing legal advice column called "Advice of Counsel" which appeared in the Chicago Daily News from 1926-1931. He continued to write feature articles on legal issues which were published in such journals as the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire and The New Yorker. This writing is characterized by a wry wit and a clear, simple style. He published only one book in his lifetime, The Magic Firecrackers, in 1949. This highly regarded children's novel grew out of the bedtime stories he told his son Gregory as a child.

Dawson married Rose Hahn in 1921. Rose's sister Emily "Mickey" Hahn became a successful writer during the 1930s due in some small part to Mitchell submitting a few of her letters to The New Yorker.

Mitchell and Rose had three children: Hilary (later Hilary Beckett Schlessiger), Jill (later Jill Metzger), and Gregory. Mitchell Dawson succumbed to Parkinson's Disease in 1956.