Quentin Anderson was an American literary critic and cultural historian at Columbia University.
10 Facts About Quentin Anderson
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Quentin Anderson's research focused on 19th-century American authors, especially Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman, and their attempts to define American identity as both connected to and differentiated from European precedents.
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The family then moved to New York City, where Quentin Anderson spent his formative years.
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Quentin Anderson studied with Jacques Barzun and Lionel Trilling at Columbia University, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1937.
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Quentin Anderson earned his Master of Arts from Harvard University in 1945 before returning to Columbia to complete his PhD in 1953.
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Quentin Anderson served in the civilian defense corps in Rockland County, New York.
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Quentin Anderson was named a full professor at the Columbia University English Department in 1961 and he chaired a disciplinary committee following the protests of 1968.
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Quentin Anderson's book The Imperial Self was a widely heralded and debated account of the shaping of American identity as revealed by nineteenth-century American literature.
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Quentin Anderson had two sons and a daughter by his first marriage.
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Quentin Anderson died of heart failure at his Morningside Heights, Manhattan home in 2003.