Daniel Aaron

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Daniel Aaron
Born	(1912-08-04) August 4, 1912 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	BA, University of Michigan PhD, Harvard University
Occupation	Americanist, academic
Employer	Harvard University
Title	Victor S. Thomas Professor of English and American Literature Emeritus
Board member of	Library of America
Awards	National Humanities Medal

Daniel Aaron (born August 4, 1912) is an American writer and academic who helped found the Library of America.

Education

Aaron received a BA from the University of Michigan, and later went on to do graduate studies at Harvard University. In 1937, Aaron became the first to graduate with a degree in "American Civilization" from Harvard University.

Career

Writing

Aaron published his first scholarly paper in 1935, “Melville and the Missionaries.” He has written studies on the American Renaissance, the Civil War, and American progressive writers. His latest work is an autobiography, The Americanist (2007). He edited the diaries of American poet Arthur Crew Inman (1895–1963): some 17 million words from 1919 to 1963. He has written a number of articles for the New York Review of Books.

Teaching

Aaron taught at Smith College for three decades and Harvard (1971-1983). He remains the Victor S. Thomas Professor of English and American Literature Emeritus at Harvard. His son, Jonathan Aaron, is an accomplished poet who holds a doctorate from Yale University and teaches writing at Emerson College in Boston, MA.

Publishing

In 1979, he helped found the Library of America, where he served as president to 1985 and board member and where remains an emeritus board member.

Recognition

Aaron was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1973 and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977.

In 2010, he was a National Humanities Medalist, whose citation reads:

Daniel Aaron: Literary scholar for his contributions to American literature and culture. As the founding president of the Library of America, he helped preserve our nation’s heritage by publishing America’s most significant writing in authoritative editions.

Selected works

Writing

• The Americanist (2007).
• American Notes: Selected Essays (1994).
• Cincinnati, Queen City of the West: 1819-1838 (1992)
• The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War (1973)
• America in Crisis: Fourteen Crucial Episodes in American History (1971)
• Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism (1961, 1974 and 1992)
• Men of Good Hope (1951)

Editing

• From a Darkened Room: The Inman Diary (1996)

See also

• List of members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Literature

External sources

• University of Michigan Press
• NEH National Medals