Three Worlds

by Carl van Doren

317 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Carl Clinton van Doren, a United States critic and biographer, won Pulitzer Prize. He was the brother of Mark van Doren and the uncle of Charles van Doren.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Carl van Doren was a prominent man of American letters in the first half of the twentieth century: a critic, teacher, editor, poet, translator, and author. Published a couple of years before his winning the Pulitzer prize in 1938 for his biography of Benjamin Franklin, this memoir's three worlds are Pre-War, Post-War, and Depression. In the first world van Doren writes about his growing up in central Illinois and attending Columbia University. The central pieces of the Post-War section are his literary editorship of The Nation and then Century Magazine, ending in 1925, and his philosophy on literary criticism in general. The final third tracks his perspective on the 1920s boom and the Depression (not only the country's, but his own, too).

The book is packed with thoughts on and anecdotes about a variety of authors, including fellow lefties Upton Sinclair and Sinclair Lewis, reserving longer portions on poets Edwin Arlington Robinson and Elinor Wylie, about whom van Doren writes, "No poet of her time would be longer remembered, and no woman." I had to look her up.

Carl van Doren died in 1950 at the age of 64.