Mark Van Doren

Van Doren, Mark (1894–1972), U.S. poet and critic. His Collected Poems (1939) earned him the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. As a critic, Van Doren began his career with a study of Henry David Thoreau in 1916. His major critical writings appear in Private Reader (1942) and The Happy Critic (1961). Van Doren was a renowned professor of English at Columbia University (1920–59), where his students included John Berryman and Lionel Trilling. He also wrote plays, novels, and short stories.