Van Doren, Mark

Related Category: American Literature: Biographies

1894–1973, American poet and critic, b. Hope, Vermilion co., Ill., grad. Univ. of Illinois, 1914, Ph.D. Columbia, 1920; brother of Carl Van Doren. He taught English at Columbia (1920–59), where he was a renowned and dedicated teacher. He was also on the staff of the Nation (1924–28, 1935–38). With Carl Van Doren he wrote American and British Literature since 1890 (1939). He wrote critical studies of various authors, including John Dryden (1920) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (1949), compiled several anthologies, and collected his lectures on poetry in The Noble Voice (1946). As a poet Van Doren was deeply influenced by Wordsworth. Among his volumes of poems are Collected Poems, 1922–1938 (1939; Pulitzer Prize) and Morning Worship and Other Poems (1959). Other writings include novels and a play, The Last Days of Lincoln (1959). He also wrote the influential Liberal Education (1943).

See his collected stories (3 vol., 1962–68) and collected poems (1963 and 1969); his autobiography (1958); the memoirs of his wife, Dorothy Graffe Van Doren, The Professor and I (1959).