American writer (1894-1972). Autograph letter signed. Falk Village. 4to 1 p. Folded.
$ 457 / 400 €
(93097)
Biographically significant letter to Mr. Johnansen: „Here there is my warmest greeting, and I take pleasure in telling you that the book of mine I like best is the one I spent a whol life’s work into: Collected and New Poems (1963). […]“ Van Doren as an American poet, writer and critic he was 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 (1924–1928), 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,[2] 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)..