Van Wyck Brooks facts for kids
Van Wyck Brooks (born February 16, 1886, in Plainfield, New Jersey – died May 2, 1963, in Bridgewater, Connecticut) was an important American writer. He was a literary critic, a biographer, and a historian. This means he wrote about books and authors, wrote life stories of people, and studied history.
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Biography of Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks went to Harvard University and graduated in 1908. While he was still a student, he published his first book. It was a collection of poems called Verses by Two Undergraduates. He wrote it with his friend John Hall Wheelock.
Brooks is best known for a series of five books called Makers and Finders. These books were published between 1936 and 1952. They told the story of how American literature grew and changed during the 1800s. Brooks added many interesting details and stories about the authors' lives.
One of his books, The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865 (published in 1936), won two big awards. He received the National Book Award for Non-Fiction. He also won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for History. This book was even listed by Life Magazine as one of the top 100 books from 1924 to 1944.
Van Wyck Brooks lived for a long time in Bridgewater, Connecticut. The town later built a new part of its library and named it after him. A man named Charles E. Piggott, who lived in Los Angeles, left money in his will for the library. This helped the town raise enough money to build the library addition in 1980.
Among his other works, Brooks wrote The Ordeal of Mark Twain (1920). This book looked at the writing journey of Samuel L. Clemens. In 1925, Brooks also translated a book from French. It was a biography of Henry David Thoreau called Henry Thoreau, Bachelor of Nature.
In 1944, Van Wyck Brooks was featured on the cover of Time Magazine.
Awards and Honors
Places Named After Him
A historic area in Plainfield, New Jersey, where he was born, is named after him. This area is famous for its old buildings. Many of them are in the Victorian and Second French Empire styles.
Prizes and Medals
- 1937: Pulitzer Prize in history
- 1937: National Book Award for nonfiction
- 1938: Gold Medal from the Limited Editions Club
- 1944: Carey Thomas Award for his book The World of Washington Irving
- 1946: Gold Medal from the National Institute of Arts and Letters
- 1953: Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal
- 1954: Huntington Hartford Foundation Award
- 1957: Secondary Education Board Award for Helen Keller: Sketch for a Portrait
Honorary Degrees
Van Wyck Brooks received many special degrees called "Doctor of Letters" or "Doctor of Humane Letters" from different universities. These are honorary degrees given to people who have achieved great things.
Doctor of Letters:
- Boston University
- Bowdoin College
- Columbia University
- Dartmouth College
- Fairleigh Dickinson University
- Harvard University
- Northeastern Illinois University
- Tufts University
- Union College
- University of Pennsylvania
Doctor of Humane Letters:
See also
In Spanish: Van Wyck Brooks para niños
