Robert Penn Warren Biography Essay

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Robert Penn Warren was born in Guthrie, Todd County, Kentucky, on April 24, 1905. He was the oldest of three children; others being Mary, the middle child, and Thomas, the youngest. His parents were Robert Franklin Warren, a proprietor and banker, and Anna Ruth Penn Warren, a schoolteacher. In the fall of 1911 he entered the Guthrie School from which he graduated at age 15. He did not then enter college as his mother felt he was too young and went instead, in September, 1920, to Clarksville High School, Clarksville, Montgomery County, Tennessee, graduating after the full school year. In the spring of 1921 he suffered an injury to his left eye from a rock throwing incident perpetrated by his younger brother. The injury eventually led to removal of the eye. During the summer of 1921, he spent six weeks in Citizens Military Training Corp, Fort Knox, Kentucky, where he published his first…show more content…
He taught at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, Southwestern College, Memphis, Tennessee, University of Minnesota, Yale University, and Louisiana State University. While at LSU he founded and edited, along with Cleanth Brooks and Charles W. Pipkin, the literary quarterly, The Southern Review. As a poet, he was appointed the nation's first Poet Laureate, February 26, 1986. He published sixteen volumes of poetry and two---Promises: Poems, 1954-1956 and Now and Then: Poems, 1976-1978---won Pulitzer Prizes. Warren published ten novels. One novel, All the King's Men, won a Pulitzer Prize. Two novels, All the King's Men and Band of Angels were made into movies. In addition he published a book of short stories, two selections of critical essays, a biography, three historical essays, a study of Melville, a critical book on Dreiser, a study of Whittier, and two studies of race relations in America. As of this writing, he is the only author to have won the Pulitzer for both fiction and poetry. For a list of his works click

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