Van Doren, Carl and Mark

Van Doren, Carl (Clinton) and Mark

(born Sept. 10, 1885, Hope, Ill., U.S.—died July 18, 1950, Torrington, Conn.) (born June 13, 1894, Hope, Ill.—died Dec. 10, 1972, Torrington, Conn.) U.S. writers and teachers. Carl, who taught at Columbia University from 1911 to 1930, edited the Cambridge History of American Literature (1917–21) and journals. His critical works include the biography Benjamin Franklin (1938, Pulitzer Prize). Mark taught at Columbia from 1920 to 1959. He published more than 20 volumes of verse, including Spring Thunder (1924) and Collected Poems (1922–38) (1939, Pulitzer Prize). He wrote three novels and several volumes of short stories and edited anthologies. His literary criticism includes works on John Dryden, William Shakespeare, and Nathaniel Hawthorne as well as Introduction to Poetry (1951), which examines shorter classic poems of English and American literature.