Cowley, Malcolm (1898–1989)

US literary critic and editor. As literary advisor to Viking Press from 1948–85, he edited popularly available editions of selected works of writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman to F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway; it is generally recognized that his edition of William Faulkner (1946) was responsible for launching Faulkner's serious reputation.

He was born in Belasco, Pennsylvania. He interrupted his studies at Harvard to serve with the American Ambulance Corps in World War I. Returning to France for graduate studies (1921–23), he got to know some of the American writers he would write of in his first widely recognized book, Exile's Return (1934). Meanwhile, he worked as a free-lance writer, contributing book reviews and critical essays, translating French works, and composing his own poetry. As associate editor of the New Republic 1929–44, he promoted contemporary American writers. Cowley encouraged later generations of writers such as John Cheever, Jack Kerouac, and Ken Kesey. He continued writing and lecturing to promote American literature until his final years.