author
Carl Van Doren
1885–1950
A sharp, wide-ranging American critic and biographer, he helped bring early American history and literature to a broad audience. Best known today for his Pulitzer Prize-winning Benjamin Franklin, he wrote with the kind of clarity that makes big subjects feel inviting.
4 Audiobooks
Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920)
by Carl Van Doren
The roving critic
by Carl Van Doren
Swift
by Carl Van Doren
James Branch Cabell
by Carl Van Doren
About the author
Born in Hope, Illinois, in 1885, Carl Van Doren studied at the University of Illinois and earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1911. He taught at Columbia before moving more fully into literary and editorial work, building a reputation as an influential critic, teacher, and man of letters.
Van Doren wrote across criticism, fiction, cultural history, and biography, and he also worked as an editor for major literary publications. His best-known book is Benjamin Franklin (1938), which won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and remains a major part of his legacy.
He was also part of a remarkable literary family: the brother of critic and teacher Mark Van Doren and the husband of editor Irita Van Doren. He died in 1950, remembered as a writer who helped connect American readers with both their literature and their history.