Arvin, Newton (23 August 1900–22 March 1963), literary critic and educator, was born Frederick Newton Arvin, Jr., in Valparaiso, Indiana, the son of Frederick Newton Arvin, Sr., an insurance agent often away on business, and Jessie Hawkins. Arvin was rather dominated by his mother, grandmother, and four sisters, and was unfortunately regarded by his jeering father as weak and effeminate. After graduating from his local high school, he attended Harvard University (where he was greatly influenced by ...
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Arvin, Newton (1900-1963), literary critic and educator
Robert L. Gale
Article
Bacon, Leonard (1887-1954), poet, literary critic, and teacher
Christopher J. Neumann
Bacon, Leonard (26 May 1887–01 January 1954), poet, literary critic, and teacher, was born in Solvay, New York, the son of Nathaniel Terry Bacon, a chemical engineer, and Helen Hazard. Bacon led a sheltered life at his mother’s familial estate in Peace Dale, Rhode Island. His parents enrolled him in 1898 in St. George’s at Newport, where he spent seven years preparing to matriculate at Yale, following in the footsteps not only of his father but of some twenty other relatives. Bacon gives candid insight into his college years, remembering colleagues and professors in an amiable light though remarking that “with the exception of English and German, I think we were not particularly well taught, or rather that the conception of teaching was poor” ( ...
Article
Baker, Carlos Heard (1909-1987), educator, author, and literary critic
Aiping Zhang
Baker, Carlos Heard (05 May 1909–18 April 1987), educator, author, and literary critic, was born in Biddeford, Maine, the son of Arthur Baker and Edna Heard. He grew up in what he called a “yankee and the nineteenth century German” tradition and had a great passion for literature even as a child. While still a college student, he published a collection of poems, ...
Article
Beach, Joseph Warren (1880-1957), educator, literary critic, and poet
David M. Craig and Jennifer M. Craig
Beach, Joseph Warren (14 January 1880–13 August 1957), educator, literary critic, and poet, was born in Gloversville, New York, the son of Eugene Beach, a physician, and Sarah Jessup Warren. After graduating from a public high school there, he attended the University of Minnesota, where his uncle Cyrus Northrop was president. He earned his B.A. in English in 1900 and moved on to Harvard University, where he received his M.A. in 1902 and his Ph.D. in 1907, both in English. At Harvard Beach studied under philosopher ...
Article
Brooks, Cleanth (1906-1994), teacher, critic, and scholar
William W. Kimbrel
Brooks, Cleanth (16 October 1906–10 May 1994), teacher, critic, and scholar, was born in Murray, Kentucky, the son of Cleanth Brooks, Sr., an Episcopalian minister, and Bessie Lee Witherspoon. The family soon moved to Tennessee where his father served a number of parishes near Memphis. Despite their peripatetic lifestyle, Cleanth’s parents helped their shy, precocious son to find the stability that he needed by encouraging in him a devotion to the great literature of the world. Eventually, Cleanth attended the Mc Tyeire School, where, in addition to the standard academic fare of the era, he learned Greek and Latin and continued the education in classical literature that had begun at age five with his father’s present of a collections of tales from the ...
Article
Brooks, Van Wyck (1886-1963), literary critic and cultural historian
Robert L. Gale
Brooks, Van Wyck (16 February 1886–02 May 1963), literary critic and cultural historian, was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, the son of Charles Edward Brooks, a stockbroker, and Sarah Bailey Ames. From the beginning, Van Wyck Brooks was precocious. He did well in the Plainfield public schools, profited intellectually from a whirlwind year mostly with his mother and brother in England, France, Germany, and Italy (1898), and in due time entered Harvard (1904). While there, he associated with many fellow students, notably ...
Article
Clifford, James Lowry (1901-1978), biographer, literary critic, and professor of literature
Dennis Paoli
Clifford, James Lowry (24 February 1901–07 April 1978), biographer, literary critic, and professor of literature, was born in Evansville, Indiana, the son of George Clifford, a businessman and amateur astronomer, and Emily Orr. In 1918 he attended Wabash College in nearby Crawfordsville, where he studied science, graduating in 1923 with an A.B. and Phi Beta Kappa honors. Two years later he received a B.S. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After several years in business back in Evansville, managing the manufacture of railroad coal cars, he relocated to Tucson, Arizona, where he taught mathematics, polo, and English at a preparatory school. Discovering in his teaching a love of literature, he entered the graduate program in English at Columbia University in 1931 and gained his M.A. the next year....
Article
Dabney, Richard (1787-1825), poet, critic, and translator
William R. Osborne
Dabney, Richard (1787– November 1825), poet, critic, and translator, was born in Louisa County, Virginia, the son of Samuel Dabney, a planter of modest means, and Jane Meriwether, aunt of the explorer Meriwether Lewis. Richard did not attend college, but at sixteen he took eagerly to languages at a Latin and Greek school and before he was twenty was invited to become an assistant Latin and Greek teacher at a Richmond academy. It is not known where Dabney learned Italian and French. His precocious assimilation of literature in four languages is remarkable in light of his scant formal education....
Article
Engle, Paul (12 Oct. 1908–22 March 1991), poet, literary critic, and educator
Lise Jaillant
Engle, Paul (12 Oct. 1908–22 March 1991), poet, literary critic, and educator, was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the son of Thomas Allen, a horse trader, and Evelyn (Reinheimer) Engle. He was educated at local schools, helped his father in the livery stable, and worked as a newsboy selling papers on the streets, a carrier boy, a chauffeur, a gardener, and, for many years, a drugstore clerk. He began writing poetry at Washington High School and was elected class poet. At Coe College in Cedar Rapids, he studied English literature, American history, and languages, and was awarded a B.A. in ...
Article
Foerster, Norman (1887-1972), professor of literature and literary critic
Gilbert B. Kelly
Foerster, Norman (14 April 1887–01 August 1972), professor of literature and literary critic, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Adolph Martin Foerster, a composer and musician, and Henrietta Reineman. Foerster graduated from Harvard College in 1910 and received an A.M. degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1912. In 1911 he married Dorothy Haskell, with whom he had two children. After teaching English at the University of Wisconsin (1911–1914) and the University of North Carolina (1914–1930), he served as the first director of the School of Letters at the University of Iowa (1930–1944). He later taught at Duke University (1948–1951), and he held offices in the Modern Language Association and the College English Association....
Article
Highet, Gilbert (1906-1978), classicist and critic
Thomas A. Suits
Highet, Gilbert (22 June 1906–20 January 1978), classicist and critic, was born Gilbert Arthur Highet in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of Gilbert Highet, a superintendent of telegraphs, and Elizabeth Boyle. He matriculated at Glasgow University in 1925, receiving a B.A. with highest honors in Greek and Latin (1928) and an M.A. (1929). From Glasgow he went up as Snell Exhibitioner to Balliol College, Oxford. At Oxford he was strongly influenced by three distinguished classicists, Gilbert Murray, C. M. Bowra, and Cyril Bailey. Here, as at Glasgow, he demonstrated the range of his interests by publishing poetry, fiction, and reviews in university literary magazines and was also active in experimental theater. He took the Oxford B.A. with a double first in classics in 1932....
Article
Hoffman, Frederick John (1909-1967), professor of English and literary critic
Melvin J. Friedman
Hoffman, Frederick John (21 September 1909–24 December 1967), professor of English and literary critic, was born in Port Washington, Wisconsin, the son of Henry George Hoffmann, owner of a small family hotel, and Celia Rose Goldammer. He was brought up a Roman Catholic in a family of nine children, all of whom worked in the family hotel during their formative years. Frederick J. Hoffman, as he came to be known through his writings, dropped the second “n” from his surname as a young man....
Article
Jacobs, Joseph (1854-1916), literary critic, folklorist, and Jewish historian
Robert E. Fierstien
Jacobs, Joseph (29 August 1854–30 January 1916), literary critic, folklorist, and Jewish historian, was born in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, the son of John Jacobs and Sarah (maiden name unknown). He received a B.A. from St. John’s College, Cambridge, England, in 1876, and the following year he went to Berlin to study with the famous Jewish scholars Moritz Lazarus and Moritz Steinschneider. Upon returning to England, he studied anthropology with Sir Francis Galton. He married Georgina Horne (date unknown); they had three children....
Article
Lewisohn, Ludwig (1883-1955), writer and translator
Stanley F. Chyet
Lewisohn, Ludwig (30 May 1883–31 December 1955), writer and translator, was born to acculturated Jewish parents, Minna Eloesser and Jacques Lewisohn, in Berlin. His father, a ne’er-do-well businessman, settled the family in a South Carolina village, where Minna Lewisohn had relatives, in 1890. But Lewisohn spent most of his childhood in Charleston where, he recalled, he strove to “forget his Jewish and his German past” and be accepted as “an American, a Southerner, and a Christian.” Graduating in 1901 from the College of Charleston with both a B.A. and an M.A., he began graduate studies in English literature at Columbia University in New York City, where in 1903 he earned another M.A. In New York he began to affirm his German and, ultimately, his Jewish origins. He was plagued by the anti-Semitism and xenophobia of American university life at that time, but as instructor of German at the University of Wisconsin (1910–1911) and subsequently as professor of German language and literature at Ohio State University (1911–1919) he established his credentials as a prime interpreter of modern European, especially German, literature....
Article
Locke, Alain Leroy (1885-1954), philosopher and literary critic
Leonard Harris
Locke, Alain Leroy (13 September 1885–09 June 1954), philosopher and literary critic, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Pliny Ishmael Locke, a lawyer, and Mary Hawkins, a teacher and member of the Felix Adler Ethical Society. Locke graduated from Central High School and the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy in Philadelphia in 1904. That same year he published his first editorial, “Moral Training in Elementary Schools,” in ...
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Locke, Alain Leroy (1885-1954)
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Alain Leroy Locke. Oil on canvas, 1943-1944, by Betsy Graves Reyneau. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Harmon Foundation.
Article
Matthiessen, F. O. (1902-1950), educator, literary critic, and scholar
Robert L. Gale
Matthiessen, F. O. (19 February 1902–01 April 1950), educator, literary critic, and scholar, was born Francis Otto Matthiessen in Pasadena, California, the son of Frederic William Matthiessen, Jr., and Lucy Orne Pratt. Matthiessen’s grandfather had emigrated from Germany to La Salle, Illinois, founded the Western Clock Corporation (later the Westclox Corporation), and died in 1918, leaving an estate of approximately $10 million. Matthiessen’s father was spoiled as a youth and unsettled as an adult, became a spendthrift and a philanderer, deserted his wife and their four children in 1907, and was divorced in 1915. Matthiessen’s mother lived with her children during some of these years in her father-in-law’s La Salle home....
Article
Millett, Fred Benjamin (1890-1976), educator and literary critic
Vincent Freimarck
Millett, Fred Benjamin (19 February 1890–01 January 1976), educator and literary critic, was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, the son of Daniel Edwin Millett, a skilled shoe factory worker, and Mary Avalina Churchill Porter. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College (A.B., 1912), he taught at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario (lecturer in English, 1912–1916), the University of Chicago (fellow in English, 1916–1918), and—after service as a U.S. Army private from May to December 1918—at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (assistant professor, 1919–1926; associate professor, 1927). In 1927 he returned as an assistant professor to the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in 1931 and was promoted to associate professor in 1933. In 1937 he joined the faculty of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, as a visiting professor of English on a two-year appointment that became permanent....
Article
Otis, Brooks (1908-1977), classical philologist and literary critic
E. Christian Kopff
Otis, Brooks (10 June 1908–26 July 1977), classical philologist and literary critic, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Edward Otis, a doctor, and Marion Faxon. Like his father before him, Otis attended Phillips Exeter Academy, from which he graduated in 1925, and proceeded to Harvard (B.A., 1929). He received his M.A. in Latin from Harvard in 1930 and taught classical languages for two years (1930–1932) at Earlham College in Indiana. He returned to Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D. in classical philology in 1935 with a dissertation written in Latin under the direction of ...
Article
Payne, William Morton (1858-1919), writer, translator, and educator
Robert Muccigrosso
Payne, William Morton (14 February 1858–11 July 1919), writer, translator, and educator, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the son of Henry Morton Payne, a manufacturer of machinery for cotton mills, and Emma Tilton. In 1868 the Paynes relocated to Chicago, where William continued his primary and secondary schooling and displayed a keen interest in literature. Financial difficulties ruled out further formal education but failed to deter young Payne from avidly pursuing self-education. Payne, who never married, remained in Chicago for the duration of his life and became one of that city’s better-known citizens....
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