Mark Van Doren Writer

Mark Van Doren (June 13, 1894 – December 10, 1972) was an American poet, writer and a critic, apart from being a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, Whittaker Chambers, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He was literary editor of The Nation, in New York City (1924–28), and its film critic, 1935 to 1938.He won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Poems 1922–1938. Amongst his other notable works, many published in The Kenyon Review, include a collaboration with brother Carl Van Doren, American and British Literature since 1890 (1939); critical studies, The Poetry of John Dryden (1920), Shakespeare (1939), The Noble Voice (1945) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (1949); collections of poems including Jonathan Gentry (1931); stories; and the verse play The Last Days of Lincoln (1959).

Personal facts

Birth dateJune 13, 1894
Birth place
Vermilion County Illinois
Date of deathDecember 10, 1972
Place of death
Torrington Connecticut
Education
Columbia University
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Spouse
Dorothy Graffe Van Doren
Children
Relatives
Carl Clinton Van Doren

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