Carl Van Doren; a Man of Ideas

Carl Van Doren was one of the twentieth century's most important public intellectuals. Van Doren's success as biographer, historian, essayist, and literary critic marked a golden era of literary and cultural criticism across the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. As one of the nation's most prominent literacy critics, Van Doren (1885-1950) was in conversation with every major writer of his generation; his personal and professional correspondence with the likes of Sinclair Lewis, Robert Frost,...
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Carl Van Doren was one of the twentieth century's most important public intellectuals. Van Doren's success as biographer, historian, essayist, and literary critic marked a golden era of literary and cultural criticism across the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. As one of the nation's most prominent literacy critics, Van Doren (1885-1950) was in conversation with every major writer of his generation; his personal and professional correspondence with the likes of Sinclair Lewis, Robert Frost, Elinor Wylie, and H. L. Mencken provide a window into America's literary and intellectual landscape across the first half of the twentieth century. The Pulitzer Prize, awarded to Van Doren in 1939 for his biography on Benjamin Franklin, recognized the formidable, elegant, and scrupulous prose that characterized the body of Van Doren's work. Van Doren was, most succinctly, a man of ideas. He wrote extensively for The Nation, Scribner's, Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, the Saturday Review, and other publications; was the author of numerous books of American and literary history; was a literary editor; wrote the introductions to over one hundred books by other authors; was editor of mail-order book clubs including the Literary Guild of America and the Readers Club; and gave lectures on issues of historical and cultural significance at public libraries and historical societies across the country. This biography examines not only the life of a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, who was a fascinating character in his own right, but the broader landscape of America's cultural and literary history in the early twentieth century.