Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks (February 16, 1886 in Plainfield, New Jersey – May 2, 1963 in Bridgewater, Connecticut) was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian.
Biography
Brooks graduated from Harvard University in 1908. As a student he published his first book, a collection of poetry called Verses by Two Undergraduates, co-written with his friend John Hall Wheelock.
Brooks's best-known work is a series of studies entitled Makers and Finders (5 volumes, 1936–1952), which chronicled the development of American literature during the long 19th century. Brooks embroidered elaborate biographical detail into anecdotal prose. For The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865 (1936) he won the second National Book Award for Non-Fiction from the American Book Sellers Association and the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for History. The book was also included in Life Magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924–1944.
Brooks was a long-time resident of Bridgewater, Connecticut, which built a town library wing in his name. Although a decade-long fund-raising effort was abandoned in 1972, a hermit in Los Angeles, Charles E. Piggott, with no connection to Bridgewater surprised the town by leaving money for the library in his will. With $210,000 raised, the library addition went up in 1980.
Among his works, the book The Ordeal of Mark Twain (1920) analyzes the literary progression of Samuel L. Clemens and attributes shortcomings to Clemens's mother and wife. In 1925 he published a translation from French of the 1920 biography of Henry David Thoreau by Leon Bazalgette, entitled Henry Thoreau, Bachelor of Nature.
In 1944, Brooks was on the cover of Time Magazine.
Bibliography
1905: Verses by Two Undergraduates (with John Hall Wheelock)
1908: The Wine of the Puritans: A Study of Present-Day America
1913: The Malady of the Ideal: Senancour, Maurice de Guérin, and Amiel
1914: John Addington Symonds: A Biographical Study
1915: The World of H.G. Wells
1915: America's Coming of Age
1920: The Ordeal of Mark Twain
1925: The Pilgrimage of Henry James
1925: Henry Thoreau, Bachelor of Nature (by Leon Bazalgette, translated by Van Wyck Brooks)
1932: The Life of Emerson
1934: Three Essays on America
1936: The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865 (Makers and Finders)
1940: New England: Indian Summer, 1865-1915 (Makers and Finders)
1941: Opinions of Oliver Allston
1941: On Literature Today
1944: The World of Washington Irving (Makers and Finders)
1947: The Times of Melville and Whitman (Makers and Finders)
1948: A Chilmark Miscellany
1952: The Confident Years: 1885-1915 (Makers and Finders)
1952: Makers and Finders: A History of the Writer in America, 1800-1915
1953: The Writer in America
1954: Scenes and Portraits: Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (An Autobiography)
1955: John Sloan: A Painter's Life
1956: Helen Keller: Sketch for a Portrait
1957: Days of the Phoenix: The Nineteen-Twenties I Remember (An Autobiography)
1958: The Dream of Arcadia: American Writers and Artists in Italy, 1760-1915
1958: From a Writer's Notebook
1959: Howells: His Life and World
1961: From the Shadow of the Mountain: My Post-Meridian Years (An Autobiography)
1962: Fenollosa and His Circle: With Other Essays in Biography
1965: An Autobiography
Awards and honors
Brooks was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1939. In 1949, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Places named after him
The Van Wyck Brooks Historic District, known for its old Victorian and Second French Empire style buildings in Plainfield, the town of his birth, is named after him.
Prizes
1937: Pulitzer Prize in history and National Book Award for 1936 nonfiction
1938: Goldmedaille des Limited Editions Club
1944: Carey Thomas Award for The World of Washington Irving
1946: Gold medal of National Institute of Arts and Letters (American Academy of Arts and Letters)
1953: Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal
1954: Huntington Hartford Foundation Award
1957: Secondary Education Board Award for Helen Keller: Sketch for a Portrait
Honorary degrees
Doctor of Letters:
Boston University
Bowdoin College
Columbia University
Dartmouth College
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Harvard University
Northeastern Illinois University
Tufts University
Union College
University of Pennsylvania
Doctor of Humane Letters:
Northwestern University
References
Further reading
Blake, Casey Nelson (1990). Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank & Lewis Mumford. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. .
External links
Van Wyck Brooks papers, 1872-1983, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania
Finding aid to Van Wyck Brooks papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
1886 births
1963 deaths
Writers from Plainfield, New Jersey
American literary critics
Pulitzer Prize for History winners
Humanism
Harvard University alumni
20th-century American historians
20th-century American male writers
Historians of the American West
Historians of the United States
National Book Award winners
People from Bridgewater, Connecticut
American male non-fiction writers
Historians from New Jersey
Historians from Connecticut
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Members of the American Philosophical Society