Austin Warren papers (Ms.95.1)

Biographical note

Austin Warren, an American literary critic and theorist, was born in Waltham, Massachusetts on July 4, 1899. He was the son on Edward Austin Warren and Nellie Myra Anderson Warren. After his graduation in 1920 from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, he entered graduate school at Harvard University in 1921. He transferred to Princeton University in 1922, where he received his Ph.D. in 1926.

Warren began his teaching career at Boston University in 1926. In 1939 he joined the English Department at the University of Iowa. He taught at the University of Michigan from 1948 until his retirement in 1968. He moved to Providence, Rhode Island in 1970, where he taught at Brown University. In 1973 the American Academy of Arts and Letters gave him its Arts and Letters Award for Literature. He received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Brown in 1974 and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of Hartford in 1980.

Warren was married to Eleanor Blake from 1941 until her death in 1946. In 1959 he married Antonia Degan Keese (Antonia J. Warren). Warren passed away on August 20, 1986, in Providence.

Warren was known for his writings on Alexander Pope, Henry James and Richard Cranshaw. He collaborated with Rene Wellek on Theory of Literature, one of the first works to systematize literary theory. His interests also included philosophy, music and theology. Warren's autobiography, Becoming What One Is, was published posthumously in 1995 by the University of Michigan Press.

Antonia J. Warren was a native of Switzerland and a physician who practiced in New York state and in Michigan, where she met Austin Warren. She later worked as an editorial advisor to the journal Modern Age. She was described by its editors as an accomplished writer of short stories, some of which were published in that journal. She passed away in Providence on March 19, 2004.