Louis Kronenberger

Louis Kronenberger (December 9, 1904 – April 30, 1980) was an American literary critic (longest with Time, 1938-1961), novelist, and biographer who wrote extensively on drama and the 18th century.^[1]

Louis Kronenberger
Louis Kronenberger (1955) Photo by Carl Van Vechten
Born	December 9, 1904 United States
Died	April 30, 1980(1980-04-30) (aged 75) United States
Occupation	Novelist, critic
Genre	Journalism, biographer

Time, where Kronenberger worked (1938–1961)

Background

Kronenberger was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Louis Kronenberger Sr., a merchant, and Mabel Newwitter. Kronenberger attended, but did not graduate from, the University of Cincinnati from 1921 to 1924.^[1]

Career

Writer

He moved to New York in 1924 and began his career at the New York Times.^[1] In 1926, he became an editor at Boni & Liveright and in 1933, at Alfred A. Knopf.^[1]

In 1938, he became drama critic for Time, where he continued to write until 1961.^[1] In 1940, William Saroyan listed Kronenberger among the associate editors at Time in the play, Love's Old Sweet Song.^[2] Starting in 1942, he worked under Whittaker Chambers, who became editor for the "Back of the Book" (1942-1944).^[3] During this period Time was, according to Chambers, "consistently able and sometimes brilliant, because of a small group of men" that included Kronenberger, T. S. Matthews, James Agee, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert Cantwell, Winthrop Sargeant, John K. Jessup, and Calvin Fixx.^[4]

In 1940, he also served as a critic for PM and worked there until 1948.^[1]

Academic

Kronenberger was a visiting professor at several universities, including City College of New York, Columbia, Harvard, Berkeley.^[1] In 1951, he founded a Department of Theater Arts at Brandeis.^[1]

He was associated with numerous organizations for promoting the arts: Yaddo, Lincoln Center Library-Museum, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[5]

Personal and death

Kronenberger married Emily L. Plaut in 1940; they had two children.^[1]

He died on April 30, 1980.^[1]

Legacy

"Kronenberger's praise was a near guarantee of box-office success."^[5]

A collection of Louis Kronenberger's papers is held by Princeton University.^[1]

Works

 

John Wilkes by Richard Houston (1769), about whom Kronenberger wrote in 1974

In his later years, Kronenberger wrote biographies, including one of John Wilkes and another of Oscar Wilde.^[1][5]

Books:

• The Grand Manner (1929)^[1]
• Kings and Desperate Men: Life in Eighteenth-Century England (1942)
• Grand Right and Left (1952)^[1]
• The Thread of Laughter: Chapters on English Stage Comedy from Jonson to Maugham (1952)
• Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954)
• Republic of Letters: Essays on Various Writers (1955)
• Marlborough's Duchess: A Study in Worldliness (1958)
• Madame De Lafayette: The Story of a Patriot's Wife (1959)
• A Month of Sundays (1961)^[1]
• The Viking Book of Aphorisms (co-authored with W.H. Auden, 1962)
• Great World: Portraits and Scenes from Greville's Memoirs, 1814-1860 (1963)
• The Cart and the Horse (1964)
• The Polished Surface: Essays in the Literature of Worldliness (1969)
• The Cutting Edge: A Collection of Witty Insults and Wicked Retorts, of Polished Snubs and Homicidal Repartee (1970)
• No Whippings, No Gold Watches (1970) memoirs
• A Mania for Magnificence (1972)
• Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (1972)
• The Last Word: Portraits of Fourteen Master Aphorists (1972)
• Extraordinary Mr. Wilkes: His Life and Times (1974)^[1]
• Oscar Wilde (1976)^[1]

Editing:

• An Anthology of Light Verse (1935)
• An Eighteenth Century Miscellany (1936)
• Reader's Companion (1945) editor
• The Pleasure of Their Company: An Anthology of Civilized Writing (1946)
• The Indispensable Johnson and Boswell (1950)
• Alexander Pope: Selected Works (1951)
• Cavalcade of Comedy (1953)
• George Bernard Shaw : A Critical Survey (1953) * The Portable Johnson and Boswell (1955)
• The Maxims of La Rochefoucauld (1959)
• Novelists on Novelists (1962) editor
• Quality: Its Image in the Arts (1969)
• Brief Lives: a Biographical Companion to the Arts (1971)

 

Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony (1882), about whom Kronenberger wrote in 1976

Books edited with others:

• The Faber Book of Aphorisms (1964) with W. H. Auden

Plays written:

• The Heavenly Twins (1955)^[1]

Plays translated, adapted:

• Mademoiselle Colombe by Jean Anouilh (New York: Coward-McCann, 1954) translated and adapted from the original Colombe (1951)

Plays edited:

• Best Plays series (1952-1961):
  • The Best Plays of 1952-1953, Burns Mantle Yearbook (1953)
  • The Best Plays of 1953-1954 (1954)
  • The Best Plays of 1954-1955 (1955)
  • The Best Plays of 1955-1956 (1956)
  • The Best Plays of 1956-1957 (1957)
  • The Best Plays of 1957-1958 (1958)
  • The Best Plays of 1958-1959 (1959)
  • The Best Plays of 1959-1960 (1960)
  • The Best Plays of 1960-1961 (1961)
• Four Plays by Bernard Shaw (1953)
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan: Six Plays (1964)

Plays edited with others:

• The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, A Faithful Reproduction of the 1729 Edition (1961) with Max Goberman
• Ibsen (1977) with Harold Clurman

References

1. "Louis Kronenberger Papers". Princeton University. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
2. Saroyan, William (1940). Love's Old Sweet Song: A Play in Three Acts. Samuel French. p. 72. Retrieved 15 July 2017..
3. Tanenhaus, Sam (1997). Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. New York: Random House. pp. 170–171 (Kronenberger), 173 (Back of the Book editor). ISBN 9780307789266. Retrieved 5 August 2017.
4. Chambers, Whittaker (1952). Witness. New York: Random House. p. 478. ISBN 9780394452333. Retrieved 7 August 2017.
5. Funston, Judith E. (1999). Kronenberger, Louis. American National Biography.

External links

•   Quotations related to Louis Kronenberger at Wikiquote