Robert Penn Warren Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Robert Penn Warren

Warren has spent his entire professional career associated with institutions of higher education. After graduation from Oxford, he joined the faculty, as an assistant professor, at Southwestern College, Memphis, Tennessee, in 1930. He stayed only one year before accepting a position as acting assistant professor at Vanderbilt, where he remained until 1934. In 1934, he went to Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 1936. It was at LSU that Warren met Cleanth Brooks, and their association continued unbroken even after Warren moved to Yale University as a professor of playwriting in 1950. At Yale, he became professor of English in 1961, and, finally, professor emeritus in 1973. Warren has also served writing conferences at the University of Colorado, Boulder (1936, 1937, 1940),and at Olivet College, Olivet, Michigan (1940); he was a visiting lecturer in 1941 at the State University of Iowa, Iowa City, and Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress from 1944 to 1945.

Read the rest of this Biography with our Robert Penn Warren Access Pass.