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=                          Van_Wyck_Brooks                           =
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                            Introduction
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Van Wyck Brooks (February 16, 1886 - May 2, 1963) was an American
literary critic, biographer, and historian.


                             Biography
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Brooks was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1886 and 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' (five 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 Booksellers
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'.

His influential 1918 essay "On Creating a Usable Past" argued that the
United States lacked its own coherent cultural arts tradition.
Historian Constance Rourke engaged his claim and set out to show a
unique American tradition.

In 1944, Brooks was on the cover of 'Time Magazine'.

He died in Bridgewater, Connecticut, in 1963.


                            Bibliography
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* 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'
* 1918: 'On Creating a Usable Past'
* 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
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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
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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


                          Further reading
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* 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
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* [http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/d/ead/upenn_rbml_MsColl650 Van
Wyck Brooks papers, 1872-1983, Kislak Center for Special Collections,
Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania]
*
*
*
*
* [https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4079652
Finding aid to Van Wyck Brooks papers at Columbia University. Rare
Book & Manuscript Library.]


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