Mark Van Doren

American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and literary critic, Mark Van Doren was born on June 13, 1894. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1914, and earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1920. He was the brother of Carl Clinton Van Doren (1885-1950), a noted historian and author. Van Doren was a brilliant and dedicated English teacher at Columbia for 39 years. Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick monitored his classes at Columbia. He served on the staff of "The Nation" intermittently during the 1920s and 1930s. His many published works included a collaboration with brother Carl on "American and British Literature since 1890" (1939), the play "The Last Days of Lincoln," critical studies, collections of poems, stories, and the memoirs of his wife, Dorothy Graffe Van Doren. The Toronto-based band Our Lady Peace, formed in 1992, took its name from one of Van Doren's poems. Mark Van Doren was awarded the coveted literary prize for his 1940 "Collected Poems." Van Doren was interred at Cornwall Hollow Cemetery in Connecticut in 1972.