A Glossary of Literary Terms

M. H. Abrams AKA Meyer Howard Abrams

Born: 23-Jul-1912

Birthplace: Long Branch, NJ

Gender: Male

Religion: Jewish

Race or Ethnicity: White

Sexual orientation: Straight

Occupation: Author

Nationality: United States

Executive summary: The Mirror and the Lamp

Military service: Psycho-Acoustics Laboratory, Harvard (WWII, classified research)

Wife: Ruth Claire Gaynes (married 62+ years)

University: AB, Harvard University (1934)

University: AM, Harvard University (1937)

University: PhD, Harvard University (1940)

Meyer (Mike) Howard Abrams (born July 23, 1912) is an American literary critic, known for works on Romanticism, in particular his book The Mirror and the Lamp. Under Abrams' editorship, the Norton Anthology of English Literature became the standard text for undergraduate survey courses across the U.S. and a major trendsetter in literary canon formation.

Abrams was born in a Jewish family in Long Branch, New Jersey. The son of a house painter and the first in his family to go to college, he entered Harvard University as an undergraduate in 1930. He went into English because, he says, "there weren't jobs in any other profession, so I thought I might as well enjoy starving, instead of starving while doing something I didn't enjoy." After earning his baccalaureate in 1934, Abrams won a Henry fellowship to the University of Cambridge, where his tutor was I.A. Richards. He returned to Harvard for graduate school in 1935 and received his Masters' degree in 1937 and his PhD in 1940. During WWII, he served at the Psycho-Acoustics Laboratory at Harvard. He describes his work as solving the problem of voice communications in a noisy military environment by establishing military codes that are highly audible and inventing selection tests for personnel who had a superior ability to recognize sound in a noisy background. In 1945 Abrams became a professor at Cornell University. As of March 4th, 2008, he was Class of 1916 Professor of English Emeritus there.

Works:

The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953) ISBN 978-0-19-501471-6

The Poetry of Pope: A Selection (1954) ISBN 978-0-88295-067-9

Literature and Belief: English Institute Essays, 1957. (1957) editor ISBN 978-0-231-02278-1

A Glossary of Literary Terms (1958; 7th ed. 1999) ISBN 978-0-15-505452-3

English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays In Criticism (1960) ISBN 978-0-19-501946-9

Norton Anthology of English Literature (1962) founding editor, many later editions

The Milk of Paradise: The Effect of Opium Visions on the Works of DeQuincey, Crabbe, Francis Thompson, and Coleridge (1970) ISBN 978-0-374-90028-1

Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (1971) ISBN 978-0-393-04305-1

The Correspondent Breeze: Essays on English Romanticism (1984) ISBN 978-0-393-30340-7

Doing Things with Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory (1989) ISBN 978-0-393-02713-6

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