20 Facts About Newton Arvin

Fredrick Newton Arvin was an American literary critic and academic.

Newton Arvin achieved national recognition for his studies of individual nineteenth-century American authors.

Frederick Newton Arvin was born in Valparaiso, Indiana, and never used his given first name.

Newton Arvin's writing career began when Van Wyck Brooks, the Harvard teacher he most admired, invited him to write for The Freeman while he was still an undergraduate.

Newton Arvin taught at Smith College for 38 years and was Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English during the year before his retirement in 1961.

Newton Arvin rarely left Northampton for long nor travelled far.

Newton Arvin visited Europe only once, in the summer of 1929 or 1930.

Newton Arvin spent a year's leave of absence in the mid-1920s as the editor of Living Age, a weekly compendium of articles from British and American periodicals.

Newton Arvin often wrote about political issues and took public political positions.

Newton Arvin addressed him as "Precious Spooky" in amorous letters that went on to discuss literary matters.

In 1948 Capote dedicated his novel Other Voices, Other Rooms to Arvin, and he later described how much he learned from Arvin saying: "Newton was my Harvard".

Newton Arvin came to national attention with the publication in 1950 of Herman Melville, a critical biography of the novelist.

Newton Arvin is concerned with the man's evolution in a way that leaves an extraordinary impression of concentrated sympathetic awareness.

Newton Arvin was elected a member of the National institute of Arts and Letters in 1952.

Newton Arvin eventually pleaded guilty, paid fines of $1200, and was given a one-year suspended sentence and placed on probation.

Smith College suspended Newton Arvin from teaching, but kept him on half salary until retirement age.

Not long after his arrest, Newton Arvin spent some time in Northampton State Hospital, to which he was admitted for suicidal depression.

Newton's biographer wrote that Newton provided the police with the names of Dorius and Spofford, but Arvin's relatives have claimed that Arvin always denied that and said that the police obtained the names from materials found in his home.

Newton Arvin's publications include The Social Poetry of the Georgics.

Newton Arvin died of bone marrow cancer at his home in San Francisco, California, in 2006.