(1885–1950). The works of U.S. writer and teacher Carl Van Doren range from surveys of literature to novels, biography, and criticism. His discerning biography Benjamin Franklin, published in 1939, earned him a Pulitzer prize.
Carl Clinton Van Doren was born on Sept. 10, 1885, in Hope, Ill. He received a doctorate from Columbia University in 1911 and taught there until 1930. In that period he was one of a group of scholars who helped to establish American literature and history as an integral part of university programs. He also served as managing editor of the Cambridge History of American Literature from 1917 to 1921 and literary editor of The Nation (1919–22) and Century Magazine (1922–25).
Van Doren’s works include The American Novel (1921; revised 1940); Contemporary American Novelists (1922); American and British Literature Since 1890 (1925), in collaboration with his brother, Mark Van Doren, and revised in 1939; and What Is American Literature? (1935). His autobiography, Three Worlds, appeared in 1936. Carl Van Doren died on July 18, 1950, in Torrington, Conn.