Van Wyck Brooks (February 16, 1886 – May 2, 1963) was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian.
Biographyedit
Brooks was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1886 and graduated from Harvard University in 1908. As a student he published his first book, a collection of poetry called Verses by Two Undergraduates, co-written with his friend John Hall Wheelock.[1]
Brooks was a long-time resident of Bridgewater, Connecticut, which built a town library wing in his name. Although a decade-long fund-raising effort was abandoned in 1972, a hermit in Los Angeles, Charles E. Piggott, with no connection to Bridgewater surprised the town by leaving money for the library in his will. With $210,000 raised, the library addition went up in 1980.[5]
Among his works, the book The Ordeal of Mark Twain (1920) analyzes the literary progression of Samuel L. Clemens and attributes shortcomings to Clemens's mother and wife. In 1925 he published a translation from French of the 1920 biography of Henry David Thoreau by Leon Bazalgette, entitled Henry Thoreau, Bachelor of Nature.
His influential 1918 essay "On Creating a Usable Past" argued that the United States lacked its own coherent cultural arts tradition.[6] Historian Constance Rourke engaged his claim and set out to show a unique American tradition.[7]
^Canby, Henry Seidel (August 14, 1944). "The 100 Outstanding Books of 1924–1944". Life. Retrieved January 26, 2024 – via Google Books. Chosen in collaboration with the magazine's editors.
^Bernstein, Jane. "History". Burnham Library. Archived from the original on March 7, 2009. Retrieved May 4, 2009.
^Olick, Jeffrey K. (Summer 2007). "From Usable Pasts to the Return of the Repressed". The Hedgehog Review. Retrieved January 26, 2024.
^Schlueter, Jennifer (December 2008). "'A theatrical race': American Identity and Popular Performance in the Writings of Constance M. Rourke". Theatre Journal. 60 (4). Baltimore. doi:10.1353/tj.0.0090.
^"Books: The Decline of the East". Time. August 19, 1940. Archived from the original on October 14, 2010. Retrieved January 26, 2024.
Blake, Casey Nelson (1990). Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank & Lewis Mumford. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-1935-2.
External linksedit
Van Wyck Brooks papers, 1872-1983, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania