Schwartz, Delmore

Related Category: American Literature: Biographies

1913–66, American poet, b. New York City, grad. New York Univ., 1935. He was an editor of the Partisan Review (1943–55). His first work, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, including the famous title story, appeared in 1938. Among his later writings are Shenandoah (1941), a verse play; Genesis (1943), a prose poem on the growth of a human being; World Is a Wedding (1948), a collection of short stories; Vaudeville for a Princess and Other Poems (1950); Summer Knowledge (1959); and Successful Love and Other Stories (1961). The tragic course of Schwartz's career, in which his early success was followed by a descent into alcoholism and madness, was the basis of Saul Bellow's novel, Humboldt's Gift (1975).

See his letters, ed. by R. Phillips (1985); biography by J. Atlas (1977); study by R. McDougall (1974).