Brooks, Van Wyck, << van WYK >> (1886-1963), was an American writer best known for his books of literary criticism and social history. Many of Brooks’s writings explore the conflict he saw in American life between art and commerce. According to Brooks, Americans traditionally have tended to emphasize commerce at the expense of art. Brooks also examined what he called a “usable past”—that is, an American literary tradition on which present-day writers could build.
His most important work is Makers and Finders: A History of the Writer in America, 1800-1915. This work consists of five volumes. The first volume, The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865 (1936), won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for history. The other volumes are New England: Indian Summer, 1865-1915 (1940), The World of Washington Irving (1944), The Times of Melville and Whitman (1947), and The Confident Years: 1885-1915 (1952).
Brooks was born on Feb. 16, 1886, in Plainfield, New Jersey, and died on May 2, 1963. A selection from his published memoirs was republished after his death as An Autobiography (1965).
