Edward Wagenknecht facts for kids

Edward (Charles) Wagenknecht (March 28, 1900 – May 24, 2004) was an American literary critic and teacher who specialized in 19th century American literature. He wrote and edited many books on literature and movies, and taught for many years at various universities, including the University of Chicago and Boston University. He also contributed many book reviews and other writings to such newspapers as the Boston Herald, The New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune and to such magazines as The Yale Review and The Atlantic Monthly.

Life

Wagenknecht was born in Chicago to Henry E. and Mary F. (Erichson) Wagenknecht, and grew up and went to school in Oak Park, Illinois. He was attracted from an early age to various art forms: theater, opera, movies, and the Oz novels of L. Frank Baum. He was particularly interested in the writings of critic Gamaliel Bradford, who immersed himself in the life and works of an author and then wrote what he called a "psychography" about the writer.

Wagenknecht received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1932. His doctoral dissertation was a Bradford-like psychograph, Charles Dickens: A Victorian Portrait. In the same year when he was awarded his Ph.D., Wagenknecht married Dorothy Arnold; the couple had three sons.

Wagenknecht spent a long career teaching at a number of schools: University of Chicago (1923–25), University of Washington (1925–1943), Illinois Institute of Technology (1943–1947), Boston University (1947–1965), and the extension division of Harvard University (1965–1972). His style of teaching was rigorous and traditional, and he challenged his students with tough examinations.

Throughout his teaching career and beyond, Wagenknecht wrote on his great loves of literature and film. Perhaps his best known books are Cavalcade of the English Novel (1943, second edition 1954) and Cavalcade of the American Novel (1952). A thinker of broad range, Wagenknecht wrote or edited books on Henry James, Marilyn Monroe, Lillian Gish, John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jenny Lind, and Theodore Roosevelt. His first publication appeared in 1927; his last in 1994. He even wrote novels (under the pseudonym Julian Forrest) about Joan of Arc and Mary, Queen of Scots. The list of his books includes more than sixty titles.

After his retirement from teaching, Wagenknecht stayed active as a writer into his nineties. A review of one of his books described him as a Jamesian hero, which is appropriate because he wrote three books on Henry James and personified the intelligence, perception and decency that James prized.

Selected works