Harold Bloom
| Harold Bloom | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 11, 1930 Bronx, New York |
| Occupation | Literary critic, writer, professor |
| Literary movement | Aestheticism, Romanticism |
| Spouse | Jeanne Gould (m. 1958; 2 children) |
Harold Bloom (born July 11, 1930) is an American literary critic and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. Since the publication of his first book in 1959, Bloom has written more than 20 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and a novel. He has edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
Bloom came to public attention in the United States as a commentator during the canon wars of the early 1990s.
Bloom was born in New York City, the son of Paula (Lev) and William Bloom. He lived in the South Bronx at 1410 Grand Concourse. He was raised as an Orthodox Jew in a Yiddish-speaking household, where he learned literary Hebrew; he taught himself English at the age of six. Bloom's father, a garment worker, was born in Odessa and his mother, a homemaker, near Brest Litovsk. Harold had three older sisters and an older brother of whom he is the sole survivor.
As a boy, Bloom read Hart Crane's Collected Poems, a collection that inspired his lifelong fascination with poetry. Bloom received a B.A. from Cornell in 1951, where he was a student of English literary critic M.H. Abrams, and a PhD from Yale in 1955. Bloom was a standout student at Yale, where he clashed with the faculty of New Critics including William K. Wimsatt. Several years later, Bloom dedicated his first major book, The Anxiety of Influence, to Wimsatt.
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