Warren, Robert Penn (1905-1989), was an American novelist, poet, and literary critic. Warren won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for All the King’s Men (1946), which describes the rise and fall of a ruthless Southern politician. Warren won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his collection Promises: Poems 1954-1956, published in 1957. He also won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his collection Now and Then: Poems 1976-1978, published in 1978. Warren served as the first poet laureate of the United States in 1986 and 1987.
In addition to All the King’s Men, Warren’s major novels include World Enough and Time (1950), The Cave (1959), and Meet Me in the Green Glen (1971). These books reflect the author’s Southern heritage. They also emphasize the interaction of past and present, and what Warren believed is each person’s struggle to determine his or her identity. Warren’s poetry explores the themes of time, the individual, and the nature of evil. His long poem Brother to Dragons (1953) is typical of his verse. The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren was published in 1998, after his death. Warren also co-edited, with the critic Cleanth Brooks, two influential textbooks—Understanding Poetry (1938) and Understanding Fiction (1943). Warren was born on April 24, 1905, in Guthrie, Kentucky. He died on Sept. 15, 1989.
