Albert Mordell

Born in Philadelphia on August 13, 1885, Albert Mordell grew up in a large family and graduated from Central High School in 1903. He became known as a literary critic, essayist, editor, and translator whose interests ranged across fiction, drama, psychology, and cultural history.

Mordell wrote and edited a substantial body of work, including studies of major writers and books that explored literature through emerging psychological ideas. One of his best-known titles is The Erotic Motive in Literature, which reflects his interest in looking beneath the surface of books and authors to ask what deeper impulses shape creative work.

His papers are preserved at the University of Pennsylvania, where archival notes describe a long career in letters that lasted well into the twentieth century. He died in 1965, leaving behind a reputation as an energetic, independent-minded man of letters.