Mark Van Doren

Born in Hope, Illinois, in 1894, Mark Van Doren grew up on a farm and went on to study at the University of Illinois before earning his Ph.D. at Columbia University. He became an American poet, critic, and man of letters whose work ranged across poetry, fiction, essays, and literary criticism.

Van Doren taught English at Columbia for nearly forty years and earned a lasting reputation as an extraordinary teacher. Many accounts of his life emphasize how strongly he influenced generations of students, not by showmanship, but by making reading feel vivid, serious, and open to everyone.

He won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Poems 1922–1938. Alongside his own poems, he wrote widely about major writers including Shakespeare and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and he remained admired for a style that was thoughtful, accessible, and quietly humane.