biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1898–1989)
|
| biography:
| Literary critic and editor, born in Belasco, Pennsylvania, USA. He interrupted his studies at Harvard to serve with the American Ambulance Corps in World War 1. Returning to France for graduate studies (1921–3), he met some of the American writers he would later feature in his first widely-known book, Exile's Return (1934). Working as a free-lance writer, he produced book reviews and critical essays, translated French works, and composed his own poetry. As associate editor of the New Republic (1929–44) he promoted contemporary American writers, and as literary adviser to Viking Press (1948–85) he edited popular editions of selected works of writers from Hawthorne and Whitman to F Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway. It is generally recognized that his Viking Portable edition of William Faulkner (1946) was responsible for launching Faulkner's serious reputation. Cowley encouraged later generations of writers such as John Cheever, Jack Kerouac, and Ken Kesey, and continued writing and lecturing to promote American literature until his final years. |
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