Documents for "American Literature: Biographies":

• Adams, Alice 1926-99, American novelist, b. Fredericksburg, Va. Her deftly wry and witty fiction concerns 20th-century domestic and professional life, and usually concentrates on the lives of women in various...

• Adams, Samuel Hopkins 1871-1958, American author, b. Dunkirk, N.Y., grad. Hamilton College, 1891. He was a reporter for the New York Sun (1891-1900) and then joined McClure's Magazine, where he gained a reputation as a muckraker for his articles on the conditions of public health in the United States. Adams also wrote a series of articles for Collier's Weekly, in which he exposed patent medicines; these pieces were credited with influencing the passage of the first Pure Food and Drugs Act. Adams was a prolific writer, producing both fiction and...

• Ade, George 1866-1944, American humorist and dramatist, b. Kentland, Ind., grad. Purdue Univ., 1887. His newspaper sketches and books attracted attention for their racy and slangy idiom and for the humor and...

• Agee, James 1909-55, American writer, b. Knoxville, Tenn., grad. Harvard, 1932. He soon joined the literary and journalistic life of New York City, becoming (1932) a writer for Fortune magazine, a book reviewer...

• Aiken, Conrad 1889-1973, American author, b. Savannah, Ga., grad. Harvard, 1912. Aiken is best known for his poetry, which often is preoccupied with the sound and structure of music; his volumes of verse include...

• Albee, Edward 1928-, American playwright, one of the leading dramatists of his generation, b. Washington, D.C. Much of his most characteristic work constitutes an absurdist commentary on American life. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962, film 1966), a Tony Award-winner that is generally regarded as his finest play, presents an all-night drinking bout in which a middle-aged professor and his wife verbally lacerate each other...

• Alcott, Louisa May 1832-88, American author, b. Germantown, Pa.; daughter of Bronson Alcott. Mostly educated by her father, she was a friend of Emerson and Thoreau , and her first book, Flower Fables (1854), was a collection of tales originally created to amuse Emerson's daughter. Alcott was determined to contribute to the small family income and worked as a servant and a seamstress before she...

• Aldrich, Thomas Bailey 1836-1907, American author and editor, b. Portsmouth, N.H. His most widely read work was The Story of a Bad Boy (1870), a vigorous narrative based on his own boyhood. His short stories, especially...

• Alger, Horatio 1834-99, American writer of boys' stories, b. Revere, Mass. He wrote over 100 books for boys, the first, Ragged Dick, being published in 1867. By leading exemplary lives, struggling valiantly against...

• Algren, Nelson 1909-81, American novelist, b. Detroit. He grew up in Chicago, and much of his fiction is set in the slums. His novels, such as Never Come Morning (1942), The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), and...

• Allen, Hervey 1889-1949, American novelist and poet, b. Pittsburgh, grad. Univ. of Pittsburgh, 1915. After service in World War I, he taught English in Charleston, S.C., where, in collaboration with DuBose...

• Allen, James Lane 1849-1925, American novelist, b. Lexington, Kentucky. Among his stylized, "genteel" novels set in his native region are A Kentucky Cardinal (1894), Aftermath (1895), and The Choir Invisible...

• Alsop, Richard 1761-1815, American author, b. Middletown, Conn. Best remembered as one of the Connecticut Wits , he collaborated with Theodore Dwight and others in writing light satiric verse for the Political Greenhouse...

• Ammons, A. R. (Archie Randolph Ammons), 1926-2001, American poet, b. Whiteville, N.C., grad. Wake Forest College (1949). He began writing poetry while serving in the Navy during World War II, and, after working...

• Anderson, Maxwell 1888-1959, American dramatist, b. Atlantic, Pa., grad. Univ. of North Dakota, 1911. His plays, many of which are written in verse, usually concern social and moral problems. Anderson was a...

• Anderson, Sherwood 1876-1941, American novelist and short-story writer, b. Camden, Ohio. After serving briefly in the Spanish-American War, he became a successful advertising man and later a manager of a paint...

• Angelou, Maya 1928-, African-American writer and performer, b. St. Louis, Mo. as Marguerite Johnson. She toured Europe and Africa in the musical Porgy and Bess (1954-55), then sang in New York City nightclubs,...

• Ashbery, John 1927-, American poet, b. Rochester, N.Y., grad. Harvard (B.A., 1949), Columbia (M.A., 1951). Ashbery is among the most acclaimed of recent American poets. During the 1960s and 70s he was one of the...

• Asimov, Isaac 1920-92, American author and scientist, b. Petrovichi, USSR, grad. Columbia Univ. (B.S., 1939; M.A., 1941; Ph.D., 1948). An astonishingly prolific author, he wrote over 400 books. He first became...

• Atherton, Gertrude Franklin (Horn) 1857-1948, American writer, b. San Francisco. She wrote a series of historical novels about California, which include The Californians (1898), Rezánov (1906), and The Ancestors (1907)....

• Auchincloss, Louis 1917-, American novelist and man of letters, b. New York City. For many years, he was a practicing lawyer in his native city. His business experience and social background are reflected in his...

• Auster, Paul 1947-, American writer, b. Newark, N.J. After publishing four volumes of poetry, he wrote his first novel, Squeeze Play (1982). A compelling storyteller, Auster became well known for the short novels of The New York Trilogy — City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986), and The Locked Room (1986)—tautly surreal variations on the urban detective story. Written with great clarity and touched by symbolism, metaphysical and epistemological concerns, and a sharply contemporary...

• Bacheller, Irving 1859-1950, American novelist, b. Pierpont, N.Y., grad. St. Lawrence Univ., 1882. In 1884 he founded the first newspaper syndicate in the United States. His novels, chiefly concerned with early...

• Baker, Ray Stannard pseud. David Grayson, 1870-1946, American author, b. Lansing, Mich., grad. Michigan State College (now Michigan State Univ.), 1889. At first a Chicago newspaper reporter, he joined the staff of McClure's Magazine in 1897, for which he wrote some famous muckraking articles. With other McClure's contributors he purchased the American Magazine in 1906 and helped edit it. The first book of quiet country sketches by "David Grayson," Adventures in Contentment, appeared in 1907; the series continued with Great Possessions (1917), The Countryman's Year (1936), and others. An intimate of Woodrow Wilson, Baker was sent to Europe in 1918 as one of the president's special agents to study the war situation. At the peace conference at Versailles, Baker...

• Baldwin, James 1924-87, American author, b. New York City. He spent an impoverished boyhood in Harlem and at 14 became a preacher in the Fireside Pentecostal Church. His first two novels, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), reflecting his experience as a young preacher, and Giovanni's Room (1956), which dealt with his homosexuality, were written while he lived in Paris. He returned to the United States in 1957 and participated in the civil-rights movement, later returning to France...

• Bangs, John Kendrick 1862-1922, American humorist, b. Yonkers, N.Y., grad. Columbia, 1883. He was the editor of Puck (1904-5) and other magazines and wrote over 30 books of humorous stories, verse, and plays, including...

• Baraka, Amiri 1934-, American poet, playwright, and political activist, b. Newark, N.J., as LeRoi Jones, studied at Rutgers Univ., Howard Univ. (B.A., 1954). He gained notoriety in 1964 when four of his plays— Dutchman, The Toilet, The Baptism, and The Slave —were produced Off-Broadway in New York City. A provocative political analyst, he has written many works that express a strident anger toward the racism of mainstream white American society. His...

• Barker, James Nelson 1784-1858, American playwright, b. Philadelphia. In 1838, Van Buren appointed him comptroller of the Treasury, and with slight interruptions he worked in the Treasury Dept. until his death. He...

• Barlow, Joel 1754-1812, American writer and diplomat, b. Redding, Conn., grad. Yale, 1778. He was one of the Connecticut Wits and a major contributor to their satirical poem The Anarchiad (1786-87). His own epic, The Vision of Columbus (1787), brought him fame in America and Europe and was revised later as The Columbiad (1807). Inspired by his friend Thomas Paine, he wrote Advice to the Privileged Orders (1792), urging that the state must represent not a class but the people and must be responsible for the welfare of the individual. His Letter to the National Convention of France on the Defects in the Constitution of 1791 won him French citizenship. His best-known lighter work is a mock eulogy, The Hasty-Pudding (1796). Appointed U.S. consul to Algiers in 1795, Barlow succeeded in releasing many American prisoners and in negotiating treaties with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. Sent to Europe in 1811 to...

• Barnes, Djuna 1892-1982, American author, b. Cornwall, N.Y. She is best known for her modernist novel Nightwood (1936), which, in its sense of horror and decay, was likened by T. S. Eliot, who edited the book,...

• Barry, Philip 1896-1949, American dramatist, b. Rochester, N.Y., grad. Yale, 1919, and studied under George Pierce Baker at Harvard. He is primarily known for his satirical, somewhat unconventional comedies of...

• Barth, John 1930-, American writer, b. Cambridge, Md. He attended Johns Hopkins (B.A. 1951, M.A. 1952), and, beginning in 1973, taught writing at its graduate school for nearly 20 years. Barth's postmodern...

• Barthelme, Donald 1931-89, American writer, b. Philadelphia. In his short stories and novels, Barthelme describes a world so unreal that traditional modes of fiction can no longer encompass it. His stories employ...

• Bates, Katharine Lee 1859-1929, American author, b. Falmouth, Mass., grad. Wellesley, 1880. She was professor of English literature at Wellesley (1891-1925). Her hymn, "America the Beautiful," first appeared in the...

• Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank Baum) , 1856-1919, American journalist, playwright, and author of children's stories, b. Chittenango, N.Y. He and his family moved to South Dakota in 1888, where he ran a newspaper, and to Chicago in...

• Beattie, Ann 1947-, American writer, b. Washington, D.C. She gained attention in the early 1970s with short stories in The New Yorker magazine and won acclaim with the 1976 publication of her novel Chilly Scenes of Winter and her story collection Distortions, both chronicling with ironic wit the disillusionments of the upper-middle-class generation that came of age in the 1960s. Her keenly observed and dryly matter-of-fact early narratives of everyday...

• Beer, Thomas 1889-1940, American author, b. Council Bluffs, Iowa, grad. Yale, 1911, and studied law at Columbia, 1911-13. He is best remembered for his biographies of Stephen Crane (1923) and Marcus (Mark)...

• Behrman, S. N. (Samuel Nathaniel Behrman) , 1893-1973, American dramatist, b. Worcester, Mass., grad. Harvard 1916. His sophisticated comedies often attempt to probe the consciences of the wealthy and privileged....

• Bellamy, Edward 1850-98, American author, b. Chicopee Falls (now part of Chicopee), Mass. After being admitted to the bar he tried his hand at journalism and contributed short stories of genuine charm to various...

• Bellow, Saul 1915-2005, American novelist, b. Lachine, Que., as Solomon Bellow, grad. Northwestern Univ., 1937. Born of Russian-Jewish parents, he grew up in the slums of Montreal and Chicago. His fiction...

• Benét, Stephen Vincent 1898-1943, American poet and author, b. Bethlehem, Pa., grad. Yale, 1919; brother of William Rose Benét. After graduating from college, Benét published several volumes of verse, including...

• Benét, William Rose 1886-1950, American poet and editor, b. Brooklyn, grad. Yale, 1907; brother of Stephen Vincent Benét. He was associated as editor or assistant editor with the Century Magazine, the Literary...

• Benchley, Robert Charles 1889-1945, American humorist, b. Worcester, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1912. He was drama critic of Life (1920-29) and of The New Yorker (1929-40). Benchley was known for a series of short satirical films that he wrote, directed, and acted in himself. His books, which are rich in anecdotes and clever interpretations of everyday...

• Bentley, Eric 1916-, American critic, editor, and translator, b. Bolton, England, grad. Oxford, 1938, Ph.D. Yale, 1941. A highly regarded and rigorously intellectual critic, particularly of the drama, Bentley is...

• Berger, Thomas 1924-, American novelist, b. Cincinnati. He is known for bitterly comic novels that often deal with the chasm between the American dream and middle-class reality. His novelistic series Crazy in Berlin...

• Berryman, John 1914-72, American poet and critic, b. McAlester, Okla., grad. Columbia, 1936. From 1955 until his death he was on the faculty of the Univ. of Minnesota. Although he had published several volumes...

• Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett 1842-1914?, American satirist, journalist, and short-story writer, b. Meigs co., Ohio. After distinguished Civil War service, he turned to journalism. In San Francisco he wrote for the News-Letter,...

• Billings, Josh pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw, 1818-85, American humorist and lecturer, b. Lanesboro, Mass. After a roving life as farmer, explorer, and coal miner, he settled in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., as an auctioneer and real estate dealer. In...

• Bird, Robert Montgomery 1806-54, American playwright and novelist, b. New Castle, Del., M.D. Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1827. He wrote several prizewinning verse plays for the actor Edwin Forrest , notably The Gladiator (1831) and The Broker of Bogota (1834). A financial misunderstanding led to a break between the two friends, and Forrest refused to release the copyrights he claimed to hold for the plays. Bird then wrote prose fiction,...

• Bishop, Elizabeth 1911-79, American poet, b. Worcester, Mass., grad. Vassar, 1934. During the 1950s and 60s she lived in Brazil, eventually returning to her native New England, where she taught at Harvard (1970-77)...

• Blackmur, Richard Palmer 1904-65, American critic and poet, b. Springfield, Mass. Although he had no formal education after high school, he was a resident fellow (1940-48) and professor (1948-65) at Princeton. His volumes...

• Bloom, Harold 1930-, American literary critic and scholar, b. New York City. The son of Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Russia, educated at Cornell (B.A., 1951) and Yale Univ. (Ph.D., 1955), the distinguished...

• Bly, Robert 1926-, American writer, translator, editor, and publisher, b. Madison, Minn., grad. Harvard, 1950. His poems, personal and precisely observant, are informed by the American landscape. Among his...

• Bodenheim, Maxwell 1893-1954, American novelist and poet, b. Hermanville, Miss. His poetry, which incorporates many techniques of the imagists , is cynical and often dwells on the grotesque. Important volumes of his verse are Minna and Myself (1918), Against This Age (1925), and Selected Poems 1914-1944 (1946). Bodenheim's novels, although savagely realistic and often brutal, contain great energy, humor, and an occasional streak of evangelism. They include Blackguard (1923), Replenishing Jessica (1925), and Georgia Man (1927). For many years a fixture of the bohemian scene in New York City's Greenwich Village, Bodenheim slipped into alcoholism and poverty in the 1940s. In Feb., 1954, he and his third wife were...

• Bogan, Louise 1897-1970, American poet and critic, b. Livermore, Maine. She spent much of her life in New York City and was for many years poetry editor for The New Yorker magazine. Her verse is intense, personal,...

• Boker, George Henry 1823-90, American poet and playwright, b. Philadelphia, grad. Princeton, 1842. He is best remembered for his romantic and heroic tragedies, written in the manner of Elizabethan drama. The best of...

• Bontemps, Arna 1902-73, African-American writer, b. Alexandria, La. He is best remembered as the author of the novel God Sends Sunday (1931), the basis of the play St. Louis Woman (1946); and of Black Thunder...

• Bourne, Randolph Silliman 1886-1918, American author, b. Bloomfield, N.J., grad. Columbia Univ., 1912. His critical examination of the American way of life established him as a spokesman for his generation. The books he...

• Bowles, Paul 1910-99, American writer and composer, b. New York City. He studied in Paris with Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland and composed (1930s-40s) a number of modernist operas, ballets, song cycles, and orchestral and chamber pieces. From 1947 on he lived in Tangier, Morocco. Strongly individualistic and written with...

• Boyd, Ernest 1887-1946, American critic and author, b. Dubin, Ireland. In the British consular service, he resigned in 1920 and settled in New York City, where he became an important literary figure. He...

• Boyesen, Hjalmar Hjorth 1848-95, American writer, b. Norway, educated at the universities of Leipzig and Christiania (Ph.D., 1868). He came to the United States in 1869 and became editor of Fremad, a Norwegian weekly published...

• Boyle, Kay 1903-93, American writer, b. St. Paul, Minn. A European expatriate in the interwar years, she returned to Europe as a correspondent for The New Yorker (1946-53) and subsequently taught English at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State Univ.). Her novels and stories often illuminate a desperate moment when courageous action is...

• Boyle, T. C. (Thomas John Coraghessan Boyle), 1948-, American writer, b. Peekskill, N.Y., grad. State Univ. of New York (B.A. 1968), Univ. of Iowa (M.F.A. 1974, Ph.D. 1977). He published under the name T...

• Brackenridge, Henry Marie 1786-1871, American writer, b. Pittsburgh; son of Hugh Henry Brackenridge. Admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1806, he moved to St. Louis, where he was a lawyer and journalist. Among his writings...

• Brackenridge, Hugh Henry 1748-1816, American author and jurist, b. Scotland, grad. Princeton, 1771. He studied theology and served in the American Revolution as chaplain, but later turned to law. His early writings include...

• Bradbury, Ray 1920-, American writer, b. Waukegan, Ill. A popular and very prolific writer of science fiction , Bradbury skillfully combines social and technological criticism with delightful fantasy. His best-known...

• Bradford, Gamaliel 1863-1932, American biographer, b. Boston. After many unsuccessful years as a writer, he achieved literary fame as a biographer with his Lee, the American (1912). He perfected the method of writing...

• Bradstreet, Anne (Dudley) c.1612-1672, early American poet, b. Northampton, England, considered the first significant woman author in the American colonies. She came to Massachusetts in the Winthrop Puritan group in 1630...

• Brautigan, Richard 1935-84, American novelist and poet, b. Tacoma, Wash. He was a counterculture hero of the 1960s and 70s and his work is an indictment of America's cultural environment. Influenced by writers of the beat generation, he exhibits a hippie sensibility in his extremely original and loosely constructed fiction, his gently passive protagonists, his droll sense of comedy, and the touch of the surreal that often marks...

• Brooks, Gwendolyn Elizabeth 1917-2000, American poet, b. Topeka, Kans. She grew up in the slums of Chicago and lived in that city until her death. Brooks's poems, technically accomplished and written in a variety of forms...

• Brooks, Maria Gowen 1795?-1845, American poet, b. Medford, Mass. Her first collection of verse, Judith, Esther, and Other Poems (1820), was praised by Southey, who named her "Maria del Occidente," which she later...

• Brooks, Van Wyck 1886-1963, American critic, b. Plainfield, N.J., grad. Harvard, 1908. His first book, The Wine of the Puritans (1909), presented the thesis that American culture has been so pervaded by puritanism with its materialistic emphasis that the artistic side of the nation's life has been profoundly neglected...

• Brown, Charles Brockden 1771-1810, American novelist and editor, b. Philadelphia, considered the first professional American novelist. After the publication of Alcuin: A Dialogue (1798), he wrote such novels as Edgar Huntly (1799), Arthur Mervyn (2 vol., 1799-1800), and Ormond (1799), in which he presented arguments for social reform. Wieland (1799) was by far his most popular work and foreshadowed the psychological novel. To support himself after 1800 he became a merchant but also edited successively three periodicals, wrote political...

• Browne, Charles Farrar see Ward, Artemus.

• Bryant, William Cullen brī´ent , 1794-1878, American poet and newspaper editor, b. Cummington, Mass. The son of a learned and highly respected physician, Bryant was exposed to English poetry in his father's vast library. As a boy...

• Buck, Pearl Sydenstricker 1892-1973, American author, b. Hillsboro, W.Va., grad. Randolph-Macon Women's College, 1914. Pearl Buck was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Literature. Until 1924 she lived principally in China,...

• Bukowski, Charles 1920-94, American underground poet and fiction writer, b. Andernach, Germany. His family immigrated to the United States in 1922, settling in Los Angeles. A hard-drinking unskilled worker and...

• Bulfinch, Thomas 1796-1867, American author, b. Newton, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1814. He wrote a series of works popularizing fable and legend, including The Age of Fables (1855), The Age of Chivalry (1858), Legends...

• Buntline, Ned pseud. of Edward Zane Carroll Judson, 1823-86, American adventurer and writer. In 1845 he founded in Nashville Ned Buntline's Own, a sensational magazine. After being lynched (1846) for a murder, but secretly cut down alive and released, he went to New York City, where he resumed the magazine. He led a mob in the Astor Place...

• Burgess, Gelett (Frank Gelett Burgess) , 1866-1951, American humorist, b. Boston. His ability as an illustrator led him into magazine work, and he was soon writing humorous articles and stories to accompany his illustrations. His...

• Burke, Kenneth Duva 1897-1993, American critic, b. Pittsburgh, Pa. He was music critic for The Dial (1927-29) and The Nation (1934-36). A profound thinker whose writings have influenced other critics, Burke saw literature...

• Burnett, Frances Eliza Hodgson bernĕt´ , 1849-1924, American author, b. Manchester, England. In 1865 she went to Knoxville, Tenn., with her family. She wrote several adult novels, but is famous for her children's books,...

• Burroughs, Edgar Rice 1875-1950, American novelist, creator of the character Tarzan. He is the author of Tarzan of the Apes (1914) and numerous other jungle and science fiction thrillers.

• Burroughs, John 1837-1921, American naturalist and author, b. Roxbury, N.Y.; son of a farmer. He was a journalist, a treasury clerk in Washington, and a bank examiner, before settling in 1874 on a farm near...

• Burroughs, William Seward 1914-97, American novelist, b. St. Louis, grad. Harvard, 1936. He was an elder member of the beat generation. Junkie (1953), originally published under the pseudonym William Lee, and Queer (written 1953, pub. 1985) are autobiographical accounts of his drug addiction, homosexual experiences, and the accidental killing of his wife. His best-known novel, Naked Lunch (1959), is a surrealistic depiction of the addict's existence. Burroughs's violent and bizarre fiction contributed to the redefinition of the novel's style and permissible subject matter. Later...

• Bynner, Witter 1881-1968, American poet, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., grad. Harvard, 1902. As a poet Bynner had a remarkable facility for catching the cadences of other writers and cultures. Under the pseudonym Emanuel...

• Cabell, Branch (James Branch Cabell) , 1879-1958, American novelist, b. Richmond, Va., grad. William and Mary, 1898. After various experiences as a journalist and a coal miner he began writing fiction. His early works, which are...

• Cable, George Washington 1844-1925, American author, b. New Orleans. He is remembered primarily for his early sketches and novels of creole life, which established his reputation as an important local-color writer. Cable...

• Cain, James Mallahan 1892-1977, American novelist, b. Annapolis, Md., grad. Washington College, 1910. He taught journalism (1924-25) and wrote political commentaries for the New York World (1924-31). His "hard-boiled"...

• Caldwell, Erskine 1903-87, American author, b. White Oak, Ga. His realistic and earthy novels of the rural South include Tobacco Road (1933), God's Little Acre (1933), This Very Earth (1948), and Summertime Island...

• Caldwell, Taylor (Janet Taylor Caldwell), 1900-1985, American novelist, b. London, England. Her best-selling works ranged from romance to satire to fictionalized biography, often reflecting her Christian beliefs...

• Calisher, Hortense 1911-, American author, b. New York City, grad. Barnard College, 1932. Her novels are difficult to categorize, blending deft character analysis with complex story lines. Written in careful yet...

• Canby, Henry Seidel 1878-1961, American editor and critic, b. Wilmington, Del., grad. Yale, 1899. He taught at Yale for over 20 years, achieving professorial rank in 1922. He established and edited (1920-24) the Literary...

• Canfield, Dorothy see Fisher, Dorothy Canfield.

• Capote, Truman 1924-84, American author, b. New Orleans as Truman Streckfus Persons. During his lifetime, the witty, diminutive writer was a well-known public personage, hobnobbing with the rich and famous and...

• Carleton, Will 1845-1912, American poet, b. Hudson, Mich. He is best known for his sentimental poems of rural life, the most famous being "Over the Hill to the Poorhouse." Among his works are Farm Ballads (1873),...

• Carver, Raymond 1938-88, American short-story writer, b. Clatskanie, Oreg. He was raised in the Pacific Northwest, where he often set his sparely written tales of everyday blue-collar life. His personal struggles...

• Cather, Willa Sibert 1873-1947, American novelist and short-story writer, b. Winchester, Va., considered one of the great American writers of the 20th cent. When she was nine her family moved to the Nebraska prairie...

• Chandler, Raymond Thornton 1888-1959, American author, b. Chicago, educated in England. After World War I, he entered the oil business in California. Bankrupt during the Depression, he published his first of many detective...

• Channing, William Ellery 1780-1842, American Unitarian minister and author, b. Newport, R.I. At 23 he was ordained minister of the Federal St. Congregational Church in Boston, where he served until his death. He was a...

• Chapman, John Jay 1862-1933, American essayist and poet, b. New York City, grad. Harvard, 1885. He was admitted to the bar in 1888, but after 10 years abandoned law for literature. Active in the anti-Tammany reform...

• Chase, Mary Ellen 1887-1973, American educator and writer, b. Blue Hill, Maine, grad. Univ. of Maine, 1909. Her works, set in Maine and excellent in their regional fidelity, include a biography and the novels Mary Peters...

• Cheever, John 1912-82, American author, b. Quincy, Mass. His expulsion from Thayer Academy was the subject of his first short story, published by the New Republic when he was 17. With meticulously rendered detail, Cheever writes about life in the affluent American suburbs. Although his works are usually comic, his view is that of a moralist. Among his works...

• Chesnutt, Charles Waddell 1858-1932, American author and lawyer, b. Cleveland, Ohio. In 1887 he was admitted to the Ohio bar. His short stories were first published in the Atlantic Monthly and syndicated newspapers. At first,...

• Chopin, Kate O'Flaherty 1851-1904, American author, b. St. Louis. Of Creole-Irish descent, she married (1870) a Louisiana businessman and lived with him in Natchitoches parish and New Orleans. In these places she...

• Churchill, Winston 1871-1947, American novelist, b. St. Louis, grad. Annapolis, 1894. He wrote several popular historical novels including Richard Carvel (1899), The Crisis (1901), and The Crossing (1904). His later...

• Ciardi, John 1916-86, American poet, b. Boston, grad. Tufts College, B.A., 1938, Univ. of Michigan, M.A., 1939. His poetry, noted for its wit and perception, includes Homeward to America (1940), Live Another...

• Claflin, Tennessee see Woodhull, Victoria (Claflin).

• Clampitt, Amy 1920-94, American poet, b. New Providence, Iowa. A librarian and editor, she wrote little until the 1960s. Her first major magazine publication was in 1974, and her first commercially published...

• Clemens, Samuel Langhorne see Twain, Mark.

• Cobb, Irvin Shrewsbury 1876-1944, American author, b. Paducah, Ky. He was a noted New York humorist and columnist. Although he wrote over 60 books, Cobb is best known for his humorous stories of Kentucky local color,...

• Colum, Padraic 1881-1972, Irish-American author, b. Longford, Ireland. He was active in the Irish literary renaissance and helped to found the Abbey Theatre. His verse includes Wild Earth (1907), The Story of...

• Connelly, Marc (Marcus Cook Connelly) , 1890-1981, American dramatist, b. McKeesport, Pa. He is best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning play The Green Pastures (1930), a fantasy of biblical history presented in...

• Cook, Ebenezer fl. 1708, American author. Virtually nothing is known about his life. He is the author of The Sot-Weed Factor (1708), a satirical poem concerning an Englishman's visit to Maryland. Sotweed Redivivus...

• Cook, George Cram see Glaspell, Susan.

• Cooper, James Fenimore 1789-1851, American novelist, b. Burlington, N.J. He was the first important American writer to draw on the subjects and landscape of his native land in order to create a vivid myth of frontier...

• Cowley, Malcolm 1898-1989, American critic and poet, b. Belsano, Pa., grad. Harvard, 1920. He lived abroad in the 1920s and knew many writers of the "lost generation," about whom he wrote in Exile's Return (1934)...

• Cozzens, James Gould 1903-78, American novelist, b. Chicago. His novels usually concern upper-middle-class professional men who are faced with moral dilemmas that require compromising their ideals. All Cozzens's works...

• Craddock, Charles Egbert pseud. of Mary Noailles Murfree , 1850-1922, American novelist, b. near Murfreesboro, Tenn. She wrote her best works about the mountain people of Tennessee, most notably The Prophet of the Great...

• Crane, Hart (Harold Hart Crane), 1899-1932, American poet, b. Garrettsville, Ohio. He published only two volumes of poetry during his lifetime, but those works established Crane as one of the most original and...

• Crane, Stephen 1871-1900, American novelist, poet, and short-story writer, b. Newark, N.J. Often designated the first modern American writer, Crane is ranked among the authors who introduced realism into American...

• Crapsey, Adelaide 1878-1914, American poet, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., grad. Vassar, 1901; daughter of Algernon Sidney Crapsey. After teaching in girls' schools she became an instructor at Smith College. A slender volume, Verse, which won high praise from critics, appeared a year after her early death from tuberculosis; a new edition with 20 additional poems was issued in 1934. Her special contribution to verse form is the...

• Creeley, Robert 1926-2005, American poet, b. Arlington, Mass. He lived in Asia, Europe, and Latin America and taught at various universities in the United States. With Charles Olson , he was a leading member of the Black Mountain school of poetry and for a time (1954-57) was editor of the Black Mountain Review. Creeley's poems have an effect of purity and elegance, with their combination of emotional directness and reticence, their conversational tone, brevity of development, and spare lyricism. His works...

• Crothers, Rachel 1878-1958, American playwright and director, b. Bloomington, Ill., grad. Illinois State Normal Univ., 1892. Her plays, many of which were social comedies treating the ethical problems of women,...

• Cullen, Countee 1903-46, American poet, b. New York City, grad. New York Univ. 1925, M.A. Harvard, 1926. A major writer of the Harlem Renaissance—a flowering of black artistic and literary talent in the...

• Cummings, E. E. (Edward Estlin Cummings), 1894-1962, American poet, b. Cambridge, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1915. His poetry, noted for its eccentricities of typography, language, and punctuation, usually seeks to...

• Custis, George Washington Parke 1781-1857, American dramatist, b. Mt. Airy, Md., educated at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton). The grandson of Martha Washington, he grew up at Mt. Vernon and became heir to part of the...

• Dahlberg, Edward 1900-1977, American novelist, critic, and essayist, b. Boston, grad. Columbia, 1925. The illegitimate son of an itinerant hairdresser, he spent much of his childhood in Kansas City. His childhood...

• Dana, Richard Henry 1787-1879, American poet and essayist, b. Cambridge, Mass.; son of Francis Dana. After studying law, he was admitted to the bar in 1811. Critic and poet, Dana was a founder and editor of the North American Review and also contributed to other periodicals. His best-known poem, The Buccaneer, appeared in 1827. See his collected Poems and Prose Writings (1850). His son, Richard Henry Dana, 1815-82, b. Cambridge, Mass., was also a writer and a lawyer. After spending two years (1831-33) at Harvard, he shipped as a common sailor around Cape Horn to California. The narrative of this...

• Davis, Rebecca Harding 1831-1910, American novelist, b. Washington, Pa.; mother of Richard Harding Davis. Her early nonfiction pieces, particularly those collected under the title Life in the Iron Mills (1861), and her...

• Davis, Richard Harding 1864-1916, American author and journalist, b. Philadelphia; son of Rebecca Harding Davis. After attending Lehigh and Johns Hopkins universities, he became a reporter in Philadelphia and later was on the New York Evening Sun. His stories and articles were soon attracting attention, and with the publication of Gallegher and Other Stories (1891), a collection of tales about a newsboy-detective, his reputation as a fiction writer was established. In 1890 he became managing editor of Harper's Weekly and began making trips in its behalf to various parts of the world. As a foreign correspondent he covered all the wars of his day and published several books recording his experiences; his war...

• Day, Clarence Shepard 1874-1935, American essayist, b. New York City, grad. Yale, 1896. His biographical sketches of his parents, God and My Father (1932), Life with Father (1935), and Life with Mother (1937), won him...

• De Forest, John William 1826-1906, American author, b. Seymour, Conn. He served in the Civil War, chiefly as a captain. His vivid accounts of battle scenes in Louisiana and Sheridan's Shenandoah valley campaign,...

• De Voto, Bernard Augustine 1897-1955, American writer and editor, b. Ogden, Utah, grad. Harvard, 1920. He taught at Northwestern Univ. (1922-27) and then at Harvard (1929-36). After 1935 he conducted "The Easy Chair" in...

• DeLillo, Don 1936-, American novelist, b. New York City, grad. Fordham Univ. (1958). DeLillo is an accomplished prose stylist with a dark vision and mordant wit. In a steady stream of novels beginning with Americana (1971), he has explored the anomie and violence of contemporary America—rock music and drugs in Great Jones Street (1973), science and mathematics in Ratner's Star (1976), terrorism in Players (1977), spying in Running Dog (1978), and political corruption in The Names (1982). His White Noise (1985), the story of Hitler studies professor Jack Gladney and a meditation on the fear of death, was followed by Libra (1988), a fictional portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald and Mao II (1991), about CIA activities in Greece. DeLillo's longest, most complicated, and most highly praised novel is Underworld (1997). In its sweep of time from 1951 to 1992, its panorama of American characters and landscapes, and its uniquely descriptive language, it portrays the vastness and variety of the ways Americans...

• Deutsch, Babette 1895-1982, American poet, b. New York City. Her poems are noted for their technical virtuosity and wide range of tone and subject matter. Her best-known collections include Animal, Vegetable, Mineral...

• Dick, Philip K. (Philip Kindred Dick), 1928-82, American science-fiction writer, b. Chicago. Dick often wrote of the psychological states of individuals caught in altered realities where the everyday merges with...

• Dickey, James 1923-97, American poet and novelist, b. Atlanta. After serving in the air force during World War II, he attended Vanderbilt Univ., graduating in 1946. He was an English teacher and an advertising...

• Dickinson, Emily 1830-86, American poet, b. Amherst, Mass. She is widely considered one of the greatest poets in American literature. Her unique, gemlike lyrics are distillations of profound feeling and original...

• Didion, Joan 1934-, American writer, b. Sacramento, Calif., grad. Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1956. Her works often explore the despair of contemporary American life, a condition she views as produced by...

• Dixon, Thomas 1864-1946, American novelist, b. Shelby, N.C., grad. Wake Forest College. A militant Southerner, he is best known for his novel The Clansman (1905), on which the movie The Birth of a Nation (1915)...

• Doctorow, E. L. (Edgar Laurence Doctorow) , 1931-, American novelist, b. New York City. Doctorow is known for his skillful blending of fiction and fact into reconstructions of eras in American history. His first work was a novel of the...

• Dodge, Mary Mapes 1831-1905, American writer of children's stories, b. New York City. During her lifetime she was the acknowledged leader in the field of juvenile fiction. Her story Hans Brinker; or, The Silver Skates...

• Dole, Nathan Haskell 1852-1935, American author, b. Chelsea, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1874. After teaching in New York and in New England, he worked as a newspaperman in Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Most of...

• Donnelly, Ignatius 1831-1901, American author and agrarian reformer, b. Philadelphia. He studied law, was admitted to the bar, and in 1856 moved to Minnesota. There he gained political prominence, was lieutenant...

• Doolittle, Hilda pseud. H. D., 1886-1961, American poet, b. Bethlehem, Pa., educated at Bryn Mawr. After 1911 she lived abroad, marrying Richard Aldington in 1913. In England, under the influence of Ezra Pound,...

• Dos Passos, John Roderigo 1896-1970, American novelist, b. Chicago, grad. Harvard, 1916. He subsequently studied in Spain and served as a World War I ambulance driver in France and Italy. In his fiction, Dos Passos is said...

• Dove, Rita 1952-, American poet, b. Akron, Ohio. Her first poetry collection, Ten Poems, was published in 1977. Her verse is at once concise, precise, and evocative. History as seen from an African-American perspective is perhaps her most important theme: the history of her country, as...

• Drake, Joseph Rodman 1795-1820, American poet and satirist, b. New York City. Under the name "The Croakers," he and his friend Fitz-Greene Halleck wrote a series of light satirical verses for the New York Evening Post...

• Dreiser, Theodore 1871-1945, American novelist, b. Terre Haute, Ind. A pioneer of naturalism in American literature, Dreiser wrote novels reflecting his mechanistic view of life, a concept that held humanity as the...

• Dunbar, Paul Laurence 1872-1906, American poet and novelist, b. Dayton, Ohio. The son of former slaves, he won recognition with his Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896)—a collection of poems from his Oak and Ivy (1893) and Majors and Minors (1895). His humorous poems employing African-American folk materials and dialect were especially popular with the public, but Dunbar viewed them as a means of getting his other works published and...

• Duncan, Robert 1919-88, American poet, b. Oakland, Calif. He was a leading poet of the San Francisco renaissance during the late 1940s. His lyric style contains private allusions, gaps in syntax, and...

• Dunlap, William 1766-1839, American dramatist and theatrical manager, b. Perth Amboy, N.J. Inspired by the success of The Contrast by Royall Tyler, he began to write plays for the American Company (see Hallam, Lewis ). His second comedy, The Father; or, American Shandyism, produced in 1789, was his first success. Later plays of his are excellent examples of the Gothic romance school. André (1798), a tragedy based on an actual occurrence in the Revolution, was the first native play on American material. He was a partner in the American Company (1796-97) and he later was manager of the...

• Duyckinck, Evert Augustus 1816-78, American editor and biographer, b. New York City, grad. Columbia, 1835. From 1840 to 1842 he edited Arturus, a Journal of Books and Opinion, and from 1848 to 1853, with his brother George...

• Dwight, Theodore 1764-1846, American author, b. Northampton, Mass.; brother of Timothy Dwight and grandson of Jonathan Edwards. A leader of the Federalist party in New England, he became famous for his political...

• Eastman, Max 1883-1969, American author, b. Canandaigua, N.Y., grad. Williams, 1905. For many years a Communist and a leader of American liberal thought, he edited the left-wing periodicals The Masses (1913-17)...

• Eberhart, Richard 1904-2005, American poet, b. Austin, Minn., grad. Dartmouth (1926) and Cambridge (1929, 1933). He taught at various universities before becoming a professor at Dartmouth (1956-71). His poetry,...

• Eggleston, Edward 1837-1902, American author, Methodist clergyman, b. Vevay, Ind., educated in frontier schools. Before 1870 he was a Bible agent, a farm worker, a circuit rider in Minnesota and Indiana, and a...

• Elkin, Stanley 1930-95, American writer, b. New York City. An offbeat fiction writer, Elkin had a gift for black comedy, fantastic imagery, bizarre situations, and a kind of lyrical bleakness, all expressed in...

• Ellison, Ralph 1914-94, African-American author, b. Oklahoma City, Okla.; studied Tuskegee Inst. (now Tuskegee Univ.). Originally a jazz musician, he moved (1936) to New York City, where he met Langston Hughes , who became his mentor, and became friends with Richard Wright , who radicalized his thinking. Ellison's earliest published writings were reviews and stories in the politically radical New Masses magazine. His literary reputation rests almost completely on one novel, Invisible Man (1952). A classic of American literature, it draws upon the author's experiences, detailing the harrowing progress of a nameless young black man struggling to live in a hostile society. Ellison...

• Emerson, Ralph Waldo 1803-82, American poet and essayist, b. Boston. Through his essays, poems, and lectures, the "Sage of Concord" established himself as a leading spokesman of transcendentalism and as a major figure...

• Erskine, John 1879-1951, American educator, author, and musician, b. New York City, grad. Columbia (B.A., 1900; Ph.D., 1903). He taught first at Amherst (1903-9) and then at Columbia, becoming professor of...

• Evans, Augusta Jane 1835-1909, American novelist, b. Columbus, Ga. Of her sentimental, moralistic novels, St. Elmo (1866) achieved greatest popularity.