Frederick Newton Arvin (August 23, 1900 – March 21, 1963) was a literary critic, historian and academic.
A native of Valparaiso, Indiana, Frederick Newton Arvin studied English Literature at Harvard and was inspired by Van Wyck Brooks. Leaving Harvard in 1922, Arvin taught at several high schools before finding tenure at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. He taught there for 38 years; among his students was Sylvia Plath, poet and noveli...
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Frederick Newton Arvin (August 23, 1900 – March 21, 1963) was a literary critic, historian and academic.
A native of Valparaiso, Indiana, Frederick Newton Arvin studied English Literature at Harvard and was inspired by Van Wyck Brooks. Leaving Harvard in 1922, Arvin taught at several high schools before finding tenure at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. He taught there for 38 years; among his students was Sylvia Plath, poet and novelist.
Arvin often wrote about political issues, until he came to national attention with the publication in 1950 of Herman Melville, a critical biography of Herman Melville, the writer today most famous as the author of Moby-Dick. Herman Melville won the second annual National Book Award for non-fiction in 1951.
Other works by Arvin included a similar analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter. Another book on the same pattern, about poet and writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and entitled Longfellow, His Life and Work, was...
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