Carl Van Doren

Carl Van Doren was an acclaimed American author and Pulitzer Prize winner who wrote extensively about American history and is perhaps best remembered for his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Benjamin Franklin. Though his primary focus was American history, Van Doren was also a gifted and prolific writer in other fields, ranging from social history and biography to non-fiction, fiction and poetry. His versatile, multi-dimensional writing made him one of the most important and influential authors of the 20th century, and his work continues to have an impact on contemporary culture.

Van Doren was born in Illinois in 1885, the eldest of nine children born to Charles and Reina Van Doren. Charles Van Doren was a professor at the University of Illinois, where Carl attended college and later graduated in 1906 with a degree in literature. He taught at Columbia University, where he edited the literary magazine and wrote book reviews, and continued his studies at Cambridge University in England. While at Cambridge, Van Doren developed an interest in English history, particularly the work of Thomas Babington Macaulay. He returned to the United States and worked as a publisher's editorial assistant at Macmillan before deciding to pursue writing full-time in 1919.

In the 1920s, Van Doren published a series of biographies on notable American figures, including Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and William McKinley. His books, which had a strong liberal political orientation, showcased Van Doren’s keen understanding of the complexities of American history. He was particularly interested in the Civil War period, and in 1929 he wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Benjamin Franklin.

In addition to his prolific work in history, Van Doren was also a gifted and innovative fiction writer. He wrote a series of novels and short stories that explored complex moral, philosophical and political themes, as well as stories of contemporary American life. One of his best-known works is The Flight from the Enchanter (1932), a novel about an American family living in a small town during the Depression. Van Doren’s writing style, simple but elegant, has been compared to that of Ernest Hemingway, and his work has been praised by such literary luminaries as T.S. Eliot, Edmund Wilson and Leslie Fiedler.

Van Doren was also an important literary critic, reviewing works from major authors of his day such as D.H. Lawrence, Ford Madox Ford, and Ernest Hemingway for the New York Times Book Review and Atlantic Monthly. His criticism often shifted focus away from traditional analysis of plot and characterization to a larger consideration of cultural and social issues. His advocacy of modern literature led to the influential anthology The American Novel Since 1925, which he edited in 1945.

Van Doren was also an accomplished poet, and in the 1940s he began to publish collections of poetry, including The Wind and the Trees (1948), The Weather Wheel (1952) and The Great Swirl (1962). His poems were characterized by their religious themes, and were inspired by everything from nature to the human condition.

Carl Van Doren was one of the leading literary lights of the twentieth century. He wrote extensively about American history and culture, and is remembered for his compelling biographies, novels and poetry. His work explored important themes from the political to the philosophical, and his influence on American literature has lasted for generations.