Kazin, Alfred (kā`zĭn), 1915–98, American critic, b. New York City, grad. College of the City of New York (B.S., 1935) and Columbia (M.A., 1938). His first book, On Native Grounds (1942), is a critical study of American prose literature from Howells Howells, William Dean, 1837–1920, American novelist, critic, and editor, b. Martins Ferry, Ohio. Both in his own novels and in his critical writing, Howells was a champion of realism in American literature.
..... Click the link for more information. to Faulkner Faulkner, William, 1897–1962, American novelist, b. New Albany, Miss., one of the great American writers of the 20th cent. Born into an old Southern family named Falkner, he changed the spelling of his last name to Faulkner when he published his first book, a
..... Click the link for more information. . Later essay collections include The Inmost Leaf (1955), Contemporaries (1962), Bright Book of Life (1973), An American Procession (1984), Writing Was Everything (1995), and God & the American Writer (1997).

Bibliography

See his autobiographical works, such as A Walker in the City (1951), Starting Out in the Thirties (1965), and New York Jew (1978), as well as A Lifetime Burning in Every Moment: From the Journals of Alfred Kazin (1996).

Kazin, Alfred

(born June 5, 1915, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.—died June 5, 1998, New York, N.Y.) U.S. literary critic. His sweeping historical study of modern American literature, On Native Grounds (1942), won him instant recognition. Much of his criticism appeared in Partisan Review, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. His books include Starting Out in the Thirties (1965), New York Jew (1978), A Writer's America (1988), and God and the American Writer (1997).

Kazin, Alfred (1915– ) literary critic, autobiographer; born in New York City. He was educated at City College and Columbia University, and with Irving Howe belonged in the 1940s to the "New York Intellectuals." Kazin became famous for On Native Grounds (1942), his classic study of modern American prose, a literature he would reinterpret in An American Procession (1982). He taught and lectured widely and reached a popular audience with an autobiographical trilogy beginning with A Walker in the City (1951).