Career As Writer
Known for literary criticism as well social and political activism, Howe wrote critical biographies on Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Sherwood Anderson, a book-length examination of the relation of politics to fiction, and theoretical essays on Modernism, the nature of fiction, and Social Darwinism, Ha was also among the first to reexaminee the work of Edwin Arlington Robinson and lead the way to establishing Robinson's reputation as one of the twentieth century's great poets. Howe's exhaustive, multi-disciplinary history of Eastern European Jews in America, World of Our Fathers, is considered a classic of social analysis and general scholarship. World of Our Fathers won the 1977 National Book Award in History. He also edited and translated many Yiddish stories, and commissioned the first English translation of Isaac Bashevis Singer for the Partisan Review. He also wrote A Margin of Hope, his autobiography, and Socialism and America.
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