Some Scholars of Robert Penn Warren


Books about Robert Penn Warren and his Works:

This is a listing, by author, of books about Robert Penn Warren. It is provided for those desiring knowledge of Warren and his works. We have attempted to show a list complete as possible at the time of designing the page. As to any we have missed we will gladly add to the list. Authors of books about Warren or about his works please contact us and we will promptly discuss the listing with you.

 

Charlotte H. Beck

John Burt

Joseph Blotner

William Bedford Clark

Jonathan S. Cullick

Lucy Ferris

Randy Hendricks

James A. Grimshaw, Jr.

Robert Koppelman

David Madden

James A. Perkins

Randolph Paul Runyon

Victor Strandberg

Joseph Blotner, who died in 2012, lived with his wife, Marnie, in Virginia. He had a distinguished teaching career at the Universities of Idaho, Virginia, North Carolina, and Michigan. He was educated at Drew, Northwestern, and the University of Pennsylvania. He interrupted his education to fly with the 8th Air Force in England during World War II. He is the father of three daughters. Twice a Guggenheim Fellow and twice a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Copenhagen, he has been a visiting professor at Trinity College (Connecticut) and the Universities of Mississippi, Arizona, and Rome. He was Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Michigan.

Robert Penn Warren, A Biography, New York, Random House, l997.
Click Here to read a review of this book.

Other Books by Joseph L. Blotner

The Political Novel, (1955)
The Fiction of J. D. Salinger (with F. L. Gwynn), (1959)
Faulkner in the University, ed. (with F. L. Gwynn), (1959)
William Faulkner's Library: A Catalogue, ed., (1964)
The Modern American Political Novel, 1900-1960, (1966)
Faulkner: A Biography, 2 vols., (1974)
Faulkner: A Biography (rev.) 1 vol., (1984)
Selected Letters of William Faulkner, ed., (1987)
Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner, ed., (1979)
William Faulkner’s Manuscripts: Soldier’s Pay, ed., (1987)
William Faulkner’s Manuscripts: Flags In The Dust, ed., (1987)
William Faulkner’s Manuscripts: Light In August, ed., (1987)
William Faulkner’s Manuscripts: Short Stories, ed., (1987)
William Faulkner, Novels, 1930-1935, ed. (with Noel Polk), (1990)
William Faulkner, Novels, 1936-1940, ed. (with Noel Polk), (1990) 
William Faulkner, Novels, 1942-1954, ed. (with Noel Polk), (1996)


Joseph L. Blotner


Randolph Paul Runyon

Randolph Paul Runyon is professor of French at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he has taught since 1977. His wide-ranging scholarship goes beyond French literature, however, and in 1984 he became interested in Robert Penn Warren. This resulted in The Taciturn Text, examining Warren’s fiction, and The Braided Dream, exploring Warren’s recent poetry. Runyon also is author of a book on the short stories of Raymond Carver and has had chapters and articles printed in numerous publications. Of note are articles on Warren: “Repeating the ‘Implacable Monotone’ in Thirty-Six Poems” (Mississippi Quarterly, winter 1994-95) and “The last of night’s voices’: A Meditation on ‘Masts at Dawn’” (The Distillery, winter 1994). Recent book chapters include: “John Grisham: Obsessive Imagery,” and “Fred Chappell: Midquestions,” both in Southern Writers at Century’s End (ed. Jeffrey J. Folks and James A. Perkins, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997). His book on an incident in Kentucky history, Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad, has received some attention and led to Runyon’s current service on the Speakers’ Bureau of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, to be built in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 2003. Runyon and wife, Elizabeth, are both Kentucky natives. They are parents to Ezekiel and Augusta.

The Taciturn Text: The Fiction of Robert Penn Warren. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990.
The Braided Dream: Robert Penn Warren’s Late Poetry. Lexington: University Press, 1990. 

Other Books by Randolph Paul Runyon

Fowles/Irving/Barthes:  Canonical Variations on an Apocryphal Theme. Columbus:  Ohio State Univ. Press, 1981

Reading Raymond Carver.  Syracuse:  Syracuse Univ. Press, 1992.

Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad.  Lexington:  Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1996.

Books Forthcoming/in progress by Randolph Paul Runyon

La Fontaine's Unbroken Chain:  The Fables in Their Sequence. Charlottesville:  EMF/Rookwood Press, 2000.

Victor Strandberg, who grew up in Worcester County in Massachusetts, earned his A.B. at Clark University in 1957 and Ph.D. at Brown in 1962. Married in 1961, he and his wife Penny have two grown daughters, Anne and Susan. After teaching at the University of Vermont until 1966, he joined the English Department at Duke University, where he has contrived to spend a semester abroad every sabbatical year with Fulbright appointments in Sweden, Belgium, and Germany (Uppsala, Louvain, and Mannheim), along with other teaching appointments in Morocco and Japan (Marrakech and Kobe). Although he has published books and essays about many American writers, Robert Penn Warren has remained a central focus of his scholarship for forty years. In 1990, a few months after the writer's death, Strandberg founded the Robert Penn Warren Circle, an association of scholars and admirers of Mr. Warren which is open to anyone interested in his life and work.

The Poetic Vision of Robert Penn Warren. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press: 1977.

Other Books by Victor Strandberg:

A Faulkner Overview: Six Perspectives. The Kennikat Press: 1981
Religious Psychology in American Literature: A Study in the Relevance of William James. Studia Humanitatis: 1981
Greek Mind/Jewish Soul: The Conflicted Art of Cynthia Ozick. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press: 1994


Victor Strandberg
Lucy Ferriss  is a novelist and scholar whose five books include Sleeping with the Boss: Female Subjectivity and Narrative Pattern in Robert Penn Warren.   She has published extensively on feminist approaches to Warren, and most notably in the Mississippi Review, Double Dealer Redux, and "To Love So Well the World": A Festschrift in Honor of Robet Penn Warren (Lang, 1992).   Recent honors include a Fulbright fellowship, Yaddo Fellowship, the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Award in the Novel, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction.  She teaches literature and creative writing at Hamilton College and lives in Clinton, New York, with her husband and two sons.

Books On Warren

Sleeping With the Boss: Female Subjectivity and Narrative Pattern in Robert Penn Warren, Louisiana State University Press, 1997


Other Books by Lucy Ferris

The Misconceiver (Simon and Schuster, 1997)
Against Gravity (Simon & Schuster, 1996)
The Gated River  (Franklin Watts, 1986)
Philip's Girl (Schoken, 1985)


Lucy Ferriss


James A. Grimshaw, Jr.

James A. Grimshaw, Jr., is the father of two children, Courtney and James, now grown, and lives with his wife, Dee, in Texas where they raise bison and peafowl in addition to his academic interests and pursuits. He presently teaches at Texas A&M University-Commerce where he is a Regents Professor of the TAMU System. Prior to that he taught at the United States Air Force Academy and was a lecturer at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. He has also been the Flannery O’Connor Distinguished Visiting Professor in English at Georgia College and a Visiting Fellow in Bibliography at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. He served in Vietnam and is a retired USAF Lieutenant Colonel. He received his M. A. degree in English with a minor in philosophy from Texas Tech University and his PH.D. in English from LSU studying under Lewis Simpson. For nine years he was chair of the Advisory Group to the Center For Robert Penn Warren Studies at Western Kentucky University and has served as president of the Robert Penn Warren Circle. He is listed in Who’s Who In America.

Understanding Robert Penn Warren by James A. Grimshaw, Jr., 2001, University of South Carolina Press
Robert Penn Warren: A Descriptive Bibliography, 1922-1979. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981.
Robert Penn Warren's "Brother to Dragons": A Discussion. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983. Editor.
"Time's Glory": Original Essays on Robert Penn Warren. Conway: University of Central Arkansas Press, 1986. Editor.
Robert Penn Warren / Cleanth Brooks: Friends of Their Youth. Lexington: King Library Press, 1993. Editor.
Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren: A Literary Correspondence. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998. Editor.

Other Books by James A. Grimshaw:

Cleanth Brooks at the United States Air Force Academy. Colorado Springs, CO: USAF Academy Press, 1980. Editor.
The Flannery O’Connor Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.
The Paul Wells Barrus Lectures, 1983-1989. Commerce: East Texas State University Press, 1990. Editor.

 Books forthcoming/in progress by James A. Grimshaw:

Robert Penn Warren’s "All the King’s Men": Three Stage Versions. With James A.Perkins. Athens: University of Georgia Press, [1999].
A Robert Penn Warren Bibliography, 1921-1996. With Jonathan R. Eller.
The Wednesday Night Carnival. [Children’s book of beast fables.]
Relationships: Ricocheting Toward Infinity. [volume of poems]

 

William Bedford Clark lives in Bryan Texas with his wife Charlene and daughters Mary and Eleanor. He was educated at the Univ. of Oklahoma(BA '69) and LSU (MA '71; PhD '73) and did postdoctoral study as an NEH Fellow at Yale. He then joined the faculty in English at North Carolina A&T University (1974-77) and in 1977 moved to Texas A&M where he is now Professor of English. Clark founded the award winning South Central Review, which is the journal of the South Central Modern Language Association. He is the author of a wide range of articles, essays, and reviews appearing in leading journals. A charter member and past president of the Robert Penn Warren Circle, he was recently named to the Advisory Board of the Robert Penn Warren Center at Western Kentucky University.

Critical Essays On Robert Penn Warren (ed.)(Boston:G.K. Hall, 1981).
The American Vision of Robert Penn Warren (Lexington)University Press of Kentucky.

Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren: The Apprentice Years, 1924-1934

Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren, Volume 2, The Southern Review Years 1935-1942

Other Books by William Bedford Clark:  

Critical Essays On American Humor (co-ed with W. Craig Turner) (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1984).
Katherine Anne Porter And Texas: An Uneasy Relationship (co-ed with Clinton Machann) College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1990).


William Bedford Clark

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John Burt

John Burt is Professor of English at Brandeis University. He is the editor of  The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren  (Louisiana State University Press, 1998) and the author of  Robert Penn Warren and American Idealism (Yale University Press, 1988). He is also the author of two books of poems, The Way Down (Princeton University Press, 1988) and Work Without Hope (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

Robert Penn Warren and American Idealism (Yale University Press, 1988)
The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren Louisiana State University Press, 1998)
Click Here to read a review of this book.

Other Books by John Burt:

The Way Down (Princeton University Press, 1988)
Work without Hope (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998)

Robert Koppelman received his BA in English and Political Studies from Pitzer College, Claremont, CA. in 1981. In 1983 he received his MA in Education from Claremont Graduate School (CA) and, from the same institution, his MA in English in 1986. At the University of Oregon, in 1993, he received his Ph.D. in English. His teaching career began in 1982 at LaSalle High School, Pasadena, CA., and he then went to San Diego Community College District as an Instructor (1987-89). From 1989-1994 he was a graduate teaching fellow at the University of Oregon and Instructor at Lane Community College both being in Eugene, OR. As Assistant Professor of English, 1994-96, he was at Gainesville College, Gainesville, GA. Presently he is an Instructor of English at Broward Community College, Davie, FL., and at Florida International University, Miami, FL. Since 1997 he has served on the Executive Board of the Robert Penn Circle being a member since 1992. He has published in the Mississippi Quarterly, and Southern Folklore.

Books

Robert Penn Warren's Modernist Spirituality-U of Missouri Press; (1995)

Books Forthcoming/in progress by Robert Koppelman

"Sing Out, Warning! Sing Out, Love!": The Writings of Lee Hays (Manuscript currently under review)

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Robert Koppelman

Jonathan S. Cullick was educated at the University of Houston (BA, 1986), after which he taught in a middle school in Texas. Married in 1988, he continued his education at Marquette University (MA, 1990) and the University of Kentucky (PhD, 1997). In addition to his book on Warren, he is the author of a number of articles on American and Southern literature, which have appeared in well known journals such as Studies in American Fiction, Southern Literary Journal, Southern Quarterly, Mississippi Quarterly, American Literary Realism, and Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. His current project is a study of racial violence.

He lives with his wife, Cheryl, in Kentucky where he is Assistant Professor; Director of the Writing Instruction Program, Department of Literature and Language, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, Kentucky.

Making History-The Biographical Narratives of Robert Penn Warren, 2000, LSU Press, Baton Rouge

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Jonathan S. Cullick

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David Madden

David Madden is edited THE LEGACY OF ROBERT PENN WARREN (LSU Press, 2000), a collection of talks delivered at a conference honoring Warren at LSU. His essay "Robert Penn Warren's ALL THE KING'S MEN: The Charged Image of the Web" first appeared in RPW and was reprinted in Madden's TOUCHING THE WEB OF SOUTHERN NOVELISTS (UT Press, 2006). He has published 15 works of fiction, the latest of which is MARBLE GODDESSES AND MORTAL FLESH, four novellas. He has received the Robert Penn Warren Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and is Robert Penn Warren Professor Emeritus, LSU.

Books by David Madden
The Legacy of Robert Penn Warren, 2000, LSU Press, Baton Rouge

Randy Hendricks is an Associate Professor of English as the State University of West Georgia, where he has taught in one capacity or another for thirteen years.  He was educated at Hiwassee College and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he received his Ph.D. in 1990. Though his teaching and research interests range broadly over American literature, with special interests in Southern Literature and American Romanticism, his intense interest in Warren has lasted since he first read "Blackberry Winter" as a college sophomore in  1976. Earlier publications on Warren include two articles-"Warren's Wandering Son" (South Atlantic Review 59.2, 1994) and "Warren's Wilderness and the Defining 'If'" (Mississippi Quarterly 48.1, 1995). Hendricks has collaborated with James A. Perkins on another book, "For the Record": A Robert Drake Reader. He lives in Carrolton, Georgia, with his wife Cher, his children Amanda and Derek, and an fluctuating number of porch dogs. Randy Hendricks can be reached via e-mail: rhendric@westga.edu


Books by Randy Hendricks
Lonelier than God-Robert Penn Warren and the Southern Exile, Randy Hendricks, 2000, The University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia 30602
 
Forthcoming Books by Randy Hendricks
"For the Record": A Robert Drake Reader. Co-edited with James A. Perkins-Forthcoming February 2001 from Mercer University Press.

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Randy Hendricks

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James A. Perkins

James A. Perkins is a Professor and Chair of the Department of English and Public Relations at Westminster College in New Wilmington, PA. He holds degrees from Centre College, Miami University and the University of Tennessee. Perkins, whose dissertation was on the American poet Kenneth Fearing, became interested in Warren during an NEH Summer Seminar conducted at Yale by R.W.B. Lewis in 1989. In addition to his scholarly writing and editing, Perkins is a poet and a short story writer. He taught creative writing for twenty years. He now teaches textual criticism and public relations research courses. In 1998, he taught as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Seoul National University.  Jane, his wife, recently retired and stays busy planning their next trip.  They have two married sons, James and Jeffrey.

Books by James A. Perkins:

With James A. Grimshaw, Jr., Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men: Three Stage Versions 2000(edited plays)

The Amish: 2 Perceptions (1976) (poetry)

The Woodcarver 1978 (poetry)

The Amish: 2 Perceptions 2 1981 (poetry)

Snakes, Butterbeans and the Discovery of Electricity 1990 (short stories)

Billy the Kid, Chicken Grizzards, and Other Tales 1977 (short stories)

With Jeffrey Folks, Southern Writers at Century's End 1997 (edited collection of essays)

Books Forthcoming

With Randy Hendricks, For the Record: A Robert Drake Reader (coming February 2001)
Charlotte H. Beck is Professor of English at Maryville College.  Her articles on Randall Jarrell, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, and other modern writers have appeared in various journals and collections.   She is immediate past president of the Robert Penn Warren Circle and edited the Fall 1994-95 issue of the Mississippi Quarterly on Warren.  Her book, Worlds and Lives: The Poetry of Randall Jarrell was published in 1983 by Associated Faculty Press.  Assisted by grants from the Appalachian College Association and Maryville College, she will soon begin work toward a book on Robert Penn Warren's literary criticism.

Books by Charlotte H. Beck
         Worlds and Lives: The Poetry of Randall Jarrell
         The Fugitive Legacy:  A Critical History

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Charlotte H. Beck