Carl (Clinton) Van Doren

Carl (Clinton) Van Doren 1885-1950, American editor and author, b. Hope, Vermilion co., Ill., grad. Univ. of Illinois, 1907, Ph.D. Columbia, 1911; brother of Mark Van Doren. He lectured at Columbia from 1911 and was an associate in English until 1930. He was literary editor of the Nation (1919-22) and Century Magazine (1922-25), managing editor of The Cambridge History of American Literature (1917-21) and editor of the Literary Guild (1926-34). His writings include critical works, such as Many Minds (1924), American Literature: an Introduction (1933), a study of Sinclair Lewis (1933), and The American Novel, 1789-1939 (1940); fiction, such as The Ninth Wave (1926); historical works, such as his Secret History of the American Revolution (1941) and The Great Rehearsal (1948); and biographies, such as those of Thomas Love Peacock (1911), Jonathan Swift (1930), and Benjamin Franklin (1938; Pulitzer Prize).

Bibliography: See his autobiography, Three Worlds (1936).

Van Doren, Carl [Clinton] (1885–1950), professor at Columbia (1911–34), and literary editor of The Nation (1919–22) and The Century (1922–25), whose critical works include The American Novel (1921, revised 1940), Contemporary American Novelists, 1900–1920 (1922), James Branch Cabell (1925), Swift (1930), Sinclair Lewis (1933), and managing editorship of the Cambridge History of American Literature (4 vols., 1917–20). Studies of American history include Benjamin Franklin (1938, Pulitzer Prize), a biography; Secret History of the American Revolution (1941); Mutiny in January (1943), about an incident in the Continental army in 1780–81; The Great Rehearsal (1948), about “the making and ratifying of the Constitution”; and Jane Mecom (1950), a life of Franklin's sister. Three Worlds (1936) is his autobiography. Mark Van Doren was his brother.