Leon Edel
Leon Edel was an influential literary biographer, best known for his extensive work on the novelist Henry James. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 9, 1907, Edel grew up in Canada after his family immigrated there. His academic journey began at McGill University, where he initially pursued journalism but later shifted his focus to English literature, particularly the works of Henry James. Throughout his career, he combined his literary interests with psychoanalytical theory, producing a notable biography of James that earned him both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Edel's scholarly contributions include several volumes of James biography and edited collections of the author's writings. He held a prestigious position as the Henry James Professor of English and American Letters at New York University, where he continued to explore the art of literary biography until his passing on September 5, 1997. His legacy as a preeminent literary biographer endures, celebrated for his meticulous research and innovative approach to biography.
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Leon Edel
Literary Critic
- Born: September 9, 1907
- Birthplace: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Died: September 5, 1997
- Place of death: Honolulu, Hawaii
Biography
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 9, 1907, Joseph Leon Edel grew up in Canada. His Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Simon and Fannie (Malamud) Edel, moved to Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1914, and Leon attended school there until 1923. Spending their formative years in a Western pioneering area convinced both his only sibling and himself that they preferred “things of the mind.” Edel’s brother Abraham proceeded to a life as a college professor, but, at least at first, Edel was inclined to a journalistic career.
After graduating from Yorkton Collegiate Institute in 1923, he enrolled in McGill University in Toronto, where he reported for two Montreal newspapers while pursuing his degree. While continuing his education at the University of Paris, he remained chiefly a student of journalism. Returning to Canada in 1932, he taught English at Sir George Williams University, but two years later he was working for a French news agency in New York. In 1935 he married Bertha Cohen, and the couple lived in Paris and London. This marriage was dissolved in 1950. His marriage to Roberta Roberts later that same year also ended in divorce. Finally, in 1980 he married Marjorie Putnam Sinclair.
Although his earliest literary passion was James Joyce, he soon fell under the spell of Henry James and began to research the great novelist’s career. His wide reading also included texts on psychoanalytical theory, which he later incorporated skillfully in his biographical methodology. His work so impressed the James family that he was given special access to family papers and even a topaz ring that Henry James had worn. The first of his many contributions to James scholarship was an edition of the writer’s plays. Edel’s work was interrupted by World War II, in which he served with distinction, earning a Bronze Star medal. He returned to James scholarship after the war, and the book on James’s plays was published in 1947.
Named a visiting professor at New York University in 1950, he quickly earned a permanent appointment, and by 1955 had attained a full professorship. In 1966 the university designated him Henry James Professor of English and American Letters, by which time he was turning out a series of volumes of James biography. After publishing two of these volumes in 1962, he received both the National Book Award for nonfiction and the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 1963.
In his later years, Edel accepted a number of visiting professorships and many further literary awards, especially after the publication of the fifth and last volume of his James biography in 1972. He also edited collections of James’s tales, letters, and journals, as well as the diary of James’s gifted sister Alice. Edel’s reflections on the art of literary biography, set forth in Literary Biography in 1957 and in Writing Lives: Principia Biographica in 1984, have provoked as much admiration as his masterly biography of Henry James. When his long life ended on September 5, 1997, Leon Edel was widely acknowledged as the preeminent literary biographer of his time.