Newton Arvin
Encyclopedia
Newton Arvin was an American literary critic and academic. He achieved national recognition for his studies of individual nineteenth-century American authors.
After teaching at Smith College for 38 years, he was forced into retirement in 1960 after pleading guilty to charges stemming from the possession of pictures of semi-nude males that the law deemed pornographic.
, Frederick Newton Arvin–he never used his original first name–studied English Literature at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude in 1921. His 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. After a short period teaching at the high school level, Arvin joined the English faculty at Smith College
in Northampton, Massachusetts
and, though he never earned a doctorate, won a tenured position. Among his students was Sylvia Plath
, poet and novelist.
He taught at Smith for 38 years and was Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English during the year before his retirement in 1961. He rarely left Northampton for long nor travelled far. He visited Europe only once in the summer of 1929 or 1930. He 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.
Arvin often wrote about political issues and took public political positions. For example, in 1936, on the day when Harvard celebrated its 300th anniversary, he joined a group of 28 Harvard graduates in an attack on retired Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell
for his role years earlier on an advisory Committee to Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller
that found that Sacco and Vanzetti
had received a fair trial. Among his co-signors were editor Malcolm Cowley
and author John Dos Passos
.
His first book-length publication, Hawthorne, appeared in 1929. A Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1935 provided him a respite from teaching during which time he completed a biography of Walt Whitman
.
In 1939, he became a trustee of Yaddo
, the artist's colony in Saratoga Springs, New York
, where he was also a frequent writer in residence. There in the summer of 1946 he met and began a two-year affair with the young Truman Capote
. Newton 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."
Arvin came to national attention with the publication in 1950 of Herman Melville, a critical biography of the novelist. It won the second annual National Book Award
for non-fiction in 1951. Alfred Kazin
thought it:
He particularly valued how Arvin's integration of the details of Melville's biography–his Calvinist background, the mental breakdown of the father he so loved, his mother's transformation by his father's failure and early death–exposes Melville's "grandeur and weakness."
Arvin was elected a member of the National institute of Arts and Letters in 1952. Edmund Wilson
wrote that of all critics of American literature only Arvin and his teacher Van Wyck Brooks "can themselves be called first-rate writers."
Though Arvin's Whitman reflected some of his leftist sympathies in the 1930s, he responded to the Cold War with renewed cultural patriotism. In a 1952 essay titled "Our Country and Our Culture" in Partisan Review he wrote:
(then Arthur Ellsworth Summerfield
) initiated a campaign against the distribution and possession of lewd materials, including soft-core homosexually-themed pictures. At the same time, local officials in Northampton were engaged in an anti-homosexual crusade. On September 2, officers of the Massachusetts State Police
arrested Arvin on pornography-related charges. The police charged Arvin with "being a lewd person" and charged both him and a Smith faculty colleague, Edward Spofford, with "possession of obscene photographs." Police said Arvin led them to Spofford and that both implicated other male faculty members. Arvin, they said, admitted "displaying the photographs at his apartment and swapping them with others." Further reports specified that the pictures were of males, later revealed as issues of Grecian Guild Pictorial and Trim: Young America’s Favorite Physique Publication containing pictures of semi-nude men.
Arvin eventually pleaded guilty, paid fines of $1200, and was given a one-year suspended sentence and placed on probation. Court testimony established a public record that a local mechanic had sex with both Arvin and Spofford.
Smith College suspended Arvin from teaching, but kept him on half salary until retirement age. Yaddo removed him from its board, but soon offered him a fellowship, though he never visited the colony again. Not long after his arrest, Arvin spent some time in Northampton State Hospital where he was admitted for suicidal depression.
The only other faculty member caught up in the police sweep was Joel Dorius. Newton's biographer wrote that Newton provided the police with the names of Dorius and Spofford, but Arvin's relatives (a nephew writing on behalf of himself and his mother, Arvin's sister) have claimed that Arvin always denied that and said that the police obtained the names from materials found in his home. The Smith College trustees fired both Dorius and Spofford, both untenured faculty members.
Their convictions were overturned in 1963.
Edward Spofford (born 1931) retired after serving as professor of literature
at Smith College
and Stanford University
. His publications include The Social Poetry of the Georgics.
Raymond Joel Dorius (January 4, 1919 – February 14, 2006) left the United States after the scandal and worked as a professor at the University of Hamburg
in Germany
. In 1964 he returned to the United States and taught as a professor at San Francisco State University
. He died of bone marrow cancer at his home in San Francisco, California
, in 2006.
, entitled Longfellow, His Life and Work, appeared shortly before his death. The New York Times headlined its review "A Tarnished Reputation Reappraised." The reputation in question was that of Longfellow. The reviewer praised its "fresh and convincing conclusions that Longfellow's best is too good to be left languishing in its present state of neglect," though he expressed dissatisfaction that Arvin "too thinly handles relationships between art and biography."
Newton Arvin died of pancreatic cancer in Northampton on March 21, 1963 and is buried at Union Street/Old City Cemetery in Porter County, Indiana.
Truman Capote
established in his will the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism
to be awarded "in honor of the critic Newton Arvin." It has been awarded annually since 1994 by the University of Iowa
. It is said to be the largest annual cash prize for literary criticism in the English language.
Friends published a collection of Arvin’s essays and book reviews as American Pantheon in 1966. Among the principal authors discussed are:
Louisa May Alcott
, Henry Adams
, Emily Dickinson
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
, William Dean Howells
, Henry James
, James Whitcomb Riley
, Henry David Thoreau
, Mark Twain
, and John Greenleaf Whittier
, as well as Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman. One reviewer, though unhappy with the book as a representation of Arvin's career, took the opportunity to summarize Arvin's contribution to the study of American literature: "He sharpened to almost unbearable precision the conflict between 'personal wholeness' and the social environment."
In 2001, Barry Werth published a biography, The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal. It provoked a response from Arvin’s nephew that criticized its portrayal of Arvin and particularly the charge that Arvin provided names of colleagues to the police in 1960.
In the course of reviewing that biography, critic Benjamin DeMott
allowed that Arvin's "penetrating books about Hawthorne and Whitman...were trailbreaking in their time and remain readable today."
Mount Holyoke College
held a symposium about Newton Arvin in 2001.
In 2002, Smith College established the "Newton Arvin Prize in American Studies," a student award.
In 2006, an independent documentary film titled The Great Pink Scare aired on the PBS series Independent Lens. It covers the arrests of Arvin, Spofford, and Dorius, and their subsequent careers.
After teaching at Smith College for 38 years, he was forced into retirement in 1960 after pleading guilty to charges stemming from the possession of pictures of semi-nude males that the law deemed pornographic.
Life and career
A native of Valparaiso, IndianaValparaiso, Indiana
Valparaiso is a city in and the county seat of Porter County, Indiana, United States. The population was 31,730 at the 2010 census, making it the 2nd largest city in Porter County.-History:...
, Frederick Newton Arvin–he never used his original first name–studied English Literature at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude in 1921. His writing career began when Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian.- Biography :Brooks was educated at Harvard University and graduated in 1908...
, the Harvard teacher he most admired, invited him to write for The Freeman while he was still an undergraduate. After a short period teaching at the high school level, Arvin joined the English faculty at Smith College
Smith College
Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...
in Northampton, Massachusetts
Northampton, Massachusetts
The city of Northampton is the county seat of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population of Northampton's central neighborhoods, was 28,549...
and, though he never earned a doctorate, won a tenured position. Among his students was Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
, poet and novelist.
He taught at Smith for 38 years and was Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English during the year before his retirement in 1961. He rarely left Northampton for long nor travelled far. He visited Europe only once in the summer of 1929 or 1930. He 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.
Arvin often wrote about political issues and took public political positions. For example, in 1936, on the day when Harvard celebrated its 300th anniversary, he joined a group of 28 Harvard graduates in an attack on retired Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell
Abbott Lawrence Lowell
Abbott Lawrence Lowell was a U.S. educator and legal scholar. He served as President of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933....
for his role years earlier on an advisory Committee to Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller
Alvan T. Fuller
Alvan Tufts Fuller was a United States Representative from Massachusetts. He became one of the wealthiest men in America, with an automobile dealership which in 1920 was recognized as "the world's most successful auto dealership." He was elected a member of the Massachusetts House of...
that found that Sacco and Vanzetti
Sacco and Vanzetti
Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States...
had received a fair trial. Among his co-signors were editor Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist.-Early life:...
and author John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
.
His first book-length publication, Hawthorne, appeared in 1929. A Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1935 provided him a respite from teaching during which time he completed a biography of Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
.
In 1939, he became a trustee of Yaddo
Yaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."...
, the artist's colony in Saratoga Springs, New York
Saratoga Springs, New York
Saratoga Springs, also known as simply Saratoga, is a city in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The population was 26,586 at the 2010 census. The name reflects the presence of mineral springs in the area. While the word "Saratoga" is known to be a corruption of a Native American name, ...
, where he was also a frequent writer in residence. There in the summer of 1946 he met and began a two-year affair with the young Truman Capote
Truman Capote
Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...
. Newton 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."
Arvin came to national attention with the publication in 1950 of Herman Melville, a critical biography of the novelist. It won the second annual National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
for non-fiction in 1951. Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin was an American writer and literary critic, many of whose writings depicted the immigrant experience in early twentieth century America....
thought it:
- the wisest and most balanced single piece of writing on Melville I have seen. It is marked not only by a thoroughly convincing analysis of his creative power and its limitations, but, what is most sharply felt in the book, a wonderfully right feeling for the burning human values involved at every point in Melville's struggle with his own nature....He is concerned with the man's evolution in a way that leaves an extraordinary impression of concentrated sympathetic awareness.
He particularly valued how Arvin's integration of the details of Melville's biography–his Calvinist background, the mental breakdown of the father he so loved, his mother's transformation by his father's failure and early death–exposes Melville's "grandeur and weakness."
Arvin was elected a member of the National institute of Arts and Letters in 1952. Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
wrote that of all critics of American literature only Arvin and his teacher Van Wyck Brooks "can themselves be called first-rate writers."
Though Arvin's Whitman reflected some of his leftist sympathies in the 1930s, he responded to the Cold War with renewed cultural patriotism. In a 1952 essay titled "Our Country and Our Culture" in Partisan Review he wrote:
- That period, at any rate is over, and the habit of rejection, of repudiation, of mere exacerbated alienation, has ceased to seem relevant or defensible–inevitably, since the culture we profoundly cherish is now disastrously threatened from without, and the truer this becomes, the intenser becomes the awareness of our necessary identification with it.
Scandal
In 1960, the office of the United States Postmaster GeneralUnited States Postmaster General
The United States Postmaster General is the Chief Executive Officer of the United States Postal Service. The office, in one form or another, is older than both the United States Constitution and the United States Declaration of Independence...
(then Arthur Ellsworth Summerfield
Arthur Ellsworth Summerfield
Arthur Ellsworth Summerfield was a U.S. political figure. He ran for the governorship of his home state of Michigan in 1946 and served as the chairman of the Republican National Committee between 1952 and 1953...
) initiated a campaign against the distribution and possession of lewd materials, including soft-core homosexually-themed pictures. At the same time, local officials in Northampton were engaged in an anti-homosexual crusade. On September 2, officers of the Massachusetts State Police
Massachusetts State Police
The Massachusetts State Police is an agency of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Executive Office of Public Safety and Security responsible for criminal law enforcement and traffic vehicle regulation across the state...
arrested Arvin on pornography-related charges. The police charged Arvin with "being a lewd person" and charged both him and a Smith faculty colleague, Edward Spofford, with "possession of obscene photographs." Police said Arvin led them to Spofford and that both implicated other male faculty members. Arvin, they said, admitted "displaying the photographs at his apartment and swapping them with others." Further reports specified that the pictures were of males, later revealed as issues of Grecian Guild Pictorial and Trim: Young America’s Favorite Physique Publication containing pictures of semi-nude men.
Arvin eventually pleaded guilty, paid fines of $1200, and was given a one-year suspended sentence and placed on probation. Court testimony established a public record that a local mechanic had sex with both Arvin and Spofford.
Smith College suspended Arvin from teaching, but kept him on half salary until retirement age. Yaddo removed him from its board, but soon offered him a fellowship, though he never visited the colony again. Not long after his arrest, Arvin spent some time in Northampton State Hospital where he was admitted for suicidal depression.
The only other faculty member caught up in the police sweep was Joel Dorius. Newton's biographer wrote that Newton provided the police with the names of Dorius and Spofford, but Arvin's relatives (a nephew writing on behalf of himself and his mother, Arvin's sister) have claimed that Arvin always denied that and said that the police obtained the names from materials found in his home. The Smith College trustees fired both Dorius and Spofford, both untenured faculty members.
Their convictions were overturned in 1963.
Edward Spofford (born 1931) retired after serving as professor of literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
at Smith College
Smith College
Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...
and Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. His publications include The Social Poetry of the Georgics.
Raymond Joel Dorius (January 4, 1919 – February 14, 2006) left the United States after the scandal and worked as a professor at the University of Hamburg
University of Hamburg
The University of Hamburg is a university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by Wilhelm Stern and others. It grew out of the previous Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen and the Kolonialinstitut as well as the Akademisches Gymnasium. There are around 38,000 students as of the start of...
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. In 1964 he returned to the United States and taught as a professor at San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
. He died of bone marrow cancer at his home in San Francisco, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, in 2006.
Death and later recognition
Arvin's final major publication, a study of Henry Wadsworth LongfellowHenry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
, entitled Longfellow, His Life and Work, appeared shortly before his death. The New York Times headlined its review "A Tarnished Reputation Reappraised." The reputation in question was that of Longfellow. The reviewer praised its "fresh and convincing conclusions that Longfellow's best is too good to be left languishing in its present state of neglect," though he expressed dissatisfaction that Arvin "too thinly handles relationships between art and biography."
Newton Arvin died of pancreatic cancer in Northampton on March 21, 1963 and is buried at Union Street/Old City Cemetery in Porter County, Indiana.
Truman Capote
Truman Capote
Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...
established in his will the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism
Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism
The Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism is awarded for literary criticism by the University of Iowa on behalf of the Truman Capote Estate. The value of the award is $30,000 , and is said to be the largest annual cash prize for literary criticism in the English language...
to be awarded "in honor of the critic Newton Arvin." It has been awarded annually since 1994 by the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
. It is said to be the largest annual cash prize for literary criticism in the English language.
Friends published a collection of Arvin’s essays and book reviews as American Pantheon in 1966. Among the principal authors discussed are:
Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868...
, Henry Adams
Henry Adams
Henry Brooks Adams was an American journalist, historian, academic and novelist. He is best known for his autobiographical book, The Education of Henry Adams. He was a member of the Adams political family.- Early life :He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Charles Francis Adams Sr...
, Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
, William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novel The Rise of...
, Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
, James Whitcomb Riley
James Whitcomb Riley
James Whitcomb Riley was an American writer, poet, and best selling author. During his lifetime he was known as the Hoosier Poet and Children's Poet for his dialect works and his children's poetry respectively...
, Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
, Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
, and John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He is usually listed as one of the Fireside Poets...
, as well as Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman. One reviewer, though unhappy with the book as a representation of Arvin's career, took the opportunity to summarize Arvin's contribution to the study of American literature: "He sharpened to almost unbearable precision the conflict between 'personal wholeness' and the social environment."
In 2001, Barry Werth published a biography, The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal. It provoked a response from Arvin’s nephew that criticized its portrayal of Arvin and particularly the charge that Arvin provided names of colleagues to the police in 1960.
In the course of reviewing that biography, critic Benjamin DeMott
Benjamin DeMott
Professor Benjamin Haile DeMott was an American writer, scholar, and cultural critic...
allowed that Arvin's "penetrating books about Hawthorne and Whitman...were trailbreaking in their time and remain readable today."
Mount Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College is a liberal arts college for women in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It was the first member of the Seven Sisters colleges, and served as a model for some of the others...
held a symposium about Newton Arvin in 2001.
In 2002, Smith College established the "Newton Arvin Prize in American Studies," a student award.
In 2006, an independent documentary film titled The Great Pink Scare aired on the PBS series Independent Lens. It covers the arrests of Arvin, Spofford, and Dorius, and their subsequent careers.
Works
- Author
- Hawthorne (Boston: Little, Brown, 1929), ISBN 1-4047-6722-3
- Whitman (NY: Macmillan Company, 1938)
- Herman Melville (NY: Sloane 1950), ISBN 0-8021-3871-3
- Longfellow: His Life and Work (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963), ISBN 0-8371-9505-5
- Daniel Aaron and Sylvan Schendler, eds., American Pantheon: Essays (NY: Delacorte Press 1966)
- "Individualism and American Writers" in The Nation, October 14, 1931
- "Religion and the Intellectuals" in Partisan Review, January, 1950
- "Our Country and Our Culture" in Partisan Review, May 1952
- Editor
- The Heart of Hawthorne's Journals, ed., (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929)
- Hawthorne's Short Stories, ed., (NY: Vintage Books, 1946), ISBN 0-394-70015-5
Sources
- Daniel Aaron, "Introduction," in Daniel Aaron and Sylvan Schendler, eds., American Pantheon: Essays (NY: Delacorte Press 1966)
- Benjamin DeMott, "The Sad Tale of Newton Arvin" in The New York Review of Books, November 29, 2001
- Joel Dorius, My Four Lives: An Academic Life Shattered By Scandal (Country Press, 2004)
- Louis Kronenberger, "A Memoir," in Daniel Aaron and Sylvan Schendler, eds., American Pantheon: Essays (NY: Delacorte Press 1966)
- Barry Werth, “Newton Arvin’s Yaddo,” in Micki McGee, ed., Yaddo : Making American Culture (NY:Columbia University Press, 2008), ISBN 0231147376
- Barry Werth, The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal (Doubleday, 2001), ISBN 0-385-49468-8
- New York Times: Wilson Follett, "Walt Whitman as the Poet of Socialism," Nov. 27, 1938, accessed December 29, 2009, book review of Whitman
- New York Times: Lawrence Thompson, "A Tarnished Reputation Reappraised," May 5, 1963, accessed December 29, 2009, book review of Longfellow: His Life and Work
- New York Times: Alfred Kazin, "The Burning Human Values in Melville," May 7, 1950, accessed December 29, 2009, book review of Herman Melville
- New York Times: Caleb Crain, "'The Scarlet Professor': Search and Destroy," August 5, 2001, accessed January 5, 2010, book review of The Scarlet Professor
- New York Times: "'The Scarlet Professor'," Aug. 26, 2001, accessed December 29, 2009, letter to the editor from Arvins's nephew
External links
- Independent Lens: "The Great Pink Scare", accessed Dec. 29, 2009