Walter Jackson Bate (May 23, 1918 – July 26, 1999) was an American literary critic and biographer. He is known for

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography The Pulitzer Prize for Biography is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished biography, autobiography or memoir by an American author o ...

-winning biographies of

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...

(1978) and

John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculo ...

(1964)."Biography or Autobiography"
''Past winners and finalists by category''. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-03-17. ''Samuel Johnson'' also won the 1978 U.S.

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

in Biography."National Book Awards – 1978"
National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-17. Bate was born in

Mankato, Minnesota Mankato ( ) is a city in Blue Earth County, Minnesota, Blue Earth, Nicollet County, Minnesota, Nicollet, and Le Sueur County, Minnesota, Le Sueur counties in the state of Minnesota. The population was 44,488 according to the 2020 United States ...

. He studied (under

Douglas Bush John Nash Douglas Bush (1896–1983) was a literary critic and literary historian. He taught for most of his life at Harvard University, where his students included many of the most prominent scholars, writers, and academics of several generation ...

) and later taught at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. His critical work, especially ''The Burden of the Past and the English Poet'', responds to and anticipates some aspects of the work of

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking wor ...

. His biographies of Keats and Johnson have enjoyed extraordinary reputations both as scholarly resources and as works of literature in their own right.

Jane Kenyon Jane Kenyon (May 23, 1947 – April 22, 1995) was an American poet and translation, translator. Her work is often characterized as simple, spare, and emotionally resonant. Kenyon was the second wife of poet, editor, and critic Donald Hall who made ...

, one of many writers to be influenced by the Keats biography, paraphrases it in her poem "Reading Late of the Death of Keats": :Clearly I had packed the wrong book
in my haste: Keats died, propped up
to get more air. Severn
straightened the body on the bed,
and cut three dampened curls
from Keats's head. He was elected a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

in 1957 and a member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 1966. Bate retired from teaching at Harvard in 1986, and died on July 26, 1999, at

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston, Massachusetts is a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. It was formed out of the 1996 merger of Beth Israel Hospital (founded in 1916) and New England Deaconess Hospital (founded ...

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, aged 81. A brief memoir appeared in 2013.Robert D. Richardson, ''Splendor of Heart: Walter Jackson Bate and the Teaching of Literature; with an interview by John Paul Russo'' (Boston: Godine, 2014).

Major works

*''Negative Capability: The Intuitive Approach in Keats'' (1939; reprinted 1976, 2012). *''From Classic to Romantic: Premises of Taste in Eighteenth-century England'' (1946). *''Criticism: The Major Texts'' edited by (1952). *''The Achievement of Samuel Johnson'' (1955). *''The Stylistic Development of Keats'' (1958). *''Prefaces to Criticism'' (1959). *''From Classic to Romantic: Premises of Taste in Eighteenth-century England'' (1961). *''John Keats'' (1963). *''Keats: A Collection of Critical Essays'' (1964). *''Coleridge'' (1968). *''The Burden of the Past and the English Poet'' (1970). *''Samuel Johnson'' (1977).

References

External links

Extensive biography from the Harvard University Gazette.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bate, Walter Jackson 1918 births 1999 deaths 20th-century American biographers American male biographers American literary critics Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences National Book Award winners Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners Harvard University faculty People from Mankato, Minnesota 20th-century American non-fiction writers Harvard University alumni 20th-century American male writers Members of the American Philosophical Society