Granville Hicks

Granville Hicks (September 9, 1901 - June 18, 1982) was an American Marxist as well as an anti-Marxist novelist, literary critic, educator, and editor.

Granville Hicks was born September 9, 1901, in Exeter, New Hampshire, to Frank Stevens and Carrie Weston (Horne) Hicks. Hicks earned his A.B. and M.A. degrees from Harvard University. In 1925 he married Dorothy Dyer, with whom he had a daughter, Stephanie.

From 1925 to 1928 Hicks taught at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, as an instructor in biblical literature. He was an assistant professor of English at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1929–35) and a counselor in American civilization at Harvard (1938–39).

Hicks was a highly influential Marxist literary critic during the 1930s, well known for his involvement in a number of celebrated causes (including his well-publicized resignation from the Communist Party in 1939). He established his reputation as an important literary critic with the 1933 publication of The Great Tradition: An Interpretation of American Literature since the Civil War, a systematic history of American literature from a Marxist perspective.

In 1932 he voted for the Communist Party ticket and joined almost all the significant Communist front groups of the 1930s. In 1934 Hicks joined the Communist Party itself and became editor of its cultural magazine The New Masses.

In 1935 Hicks was let go from his teaching position at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a dismissal he claimed was politically motivated although school officials denied this. He continued to teach at various institutions but devoted more and more of his time to writing. In 1936 Hicks was asked to co-write John Reed: The Making of a Revolutionary, a biography of radical journalist John Reed. Communist Party chairman Earl Browder pressured Hicks to remove several passages that reflected negatively on the Soviet Union, but in the end the book was praised for its even-handed and unbiased presentation.

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