Harold Bloom

Graham Allen (University College Cork)
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Harold Bloom, son of William Bloom and Paula Levi, was born into a working-class Jewish family in New York, his father making a living as a garment worker. He was educated at Cornell University, where he gained his B.A. in 1951, and at Yale University, where he gained his Ph.D in 1955. In 1958 he married Jeanne Gould with whom he has two sons. He has spent the majority of his academic career at Yale where, since 1983, he has been Sterling Professor of Humanities.

Bloom has always been a prodigious author. His early critical work in the 1950s and 1960s centres on the study of Romantic poetry. An important contributor to the reassessment of Romanticism in those two decades, Bloom published Shelley's Mythmaking in 1959, The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry in 1961,

1326 words

Citation: Allen, Graham. "Harold Bloom". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 November 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=450, accessed 19 March 2024.]

450 Harold Bloom 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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