Robert Penn Warren

Cecilia Donohue (Independent Scholar - North America)

Ed. by Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 24 Apr 1905
Died 15 Sep 1989
Activity 1925-1985

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Biographer
Cultural Theorist/ Critic
Editor
Essayist
Literary Critic/ Historian
Novelist
Poet
Scholar
Story-writer
Teacher/ Professor

Resources

Warren's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Born on April 24th, 1905 in Guthrie, Kentucky to Robert Franklin and Anna Ruth Penn Warren, Robert Penn Warren distinguished himself over seven decades in multiple genres: full-length fiction, the short story, poetry, literary criticism, and the sociohistoric essay. As the oldest child of well-read parents, Robert Penn Warren excelled as an elementary and high school student, skipping three grades along the way. An accidental yet serious injury to his left eye forced the sixteen-year-old Robert to abandon hopes of attending the United States Naval Academy. Instead, he chose to major in chemistry at Vanderbilt University, and enrolled there for the fall 1921 term. Soon disillusioned with the curriculum in this subject, he flourished in freshman English, and attracted the attention of John…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1793 words

Citation: Donohue, Cecilia. "Robert Penn Warren". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4927, accessed 21 November 2024.]