Carl Clinton Van Doren
Encyclopedia
Carl Clinton Van Doren was a U.S. critic and Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

-winning biographer. He was the brother of Mark Van Doren
Mark Van Doren
Mark Van Doren 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, and Beat Generation...

 and the uncle of Charles Van Doren
Charles Van Doren
Charles Lincoln Van Doren is an American intellectual, writer, and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s...

.

Life and career

He was born in Hope, Vermilion County
Vermilion County, Illinois
Vermilion County is a county located in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Illinois, between the Indiana border and Champaign County. It was established in 1826 and was the 45th of Illinois' 102 counties...

, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

 on September 10, 1885 to a country doctor and was raised on the family farm. He earned a bachelor of arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

 in 1907 and a doctorate from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in 1911 and continued to teach there until 1930. He was a world federalist and once said, "It is obvious that no difficulty in the way of world government can match the danger of a world without it".

Van Doren's study The American Novel, published in 1921, is generally credited with helping to re-establish Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....

's critical status as first-rate literary master.

From 1912 to 1935, Van Doren was married to Irita Bradford
Irita Bradford Van Doren
Irita Bradford Van Doren was an American literary figure and editor of the New York Herald Tribune book review for 37 years....

, editor of the New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...

 book review. He married Jean Wright Gorman in 1939, but divorced in 1945.

Van Doren died in Torrington, Connecticut
Torrington, Connecticut
Torrington is the largest city in Litchfield County, Connecticut and the northwestern Connecticut region. It is also the core city of the largest micropolitan area in the United States. The city population was 36,383 according to the 2010 census....

 on July 18, 1950.

Legacy

A residence hall at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

 is named after Carl Clinton Van Doren.

Publications


External links

  • Works by Carl Clinton Van Doren at Internet Archive
    Internet Archive
    The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...

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