Warren, Robert Penn (1905–1989)

US poet and novelist. He is the only author to have received a Pulitzer Prize for both prose and poetry. His work explored the moral problems of the South. His most important novel, All the King's Men (1946; Pulitzer Prize 1947), depicts the rise and fall of a back-country demagogue modelled on the career of Huey Long. He also won Pulitzer Prizes for Promises (1968) and Now and Then: Poems (1976–78). He was a senior figure of the New Criticism, and the first official US poet laureate 1986–88.

Born in Guthrie, Kentucky, and educated at Vanderbilt University, Warren received an MA degree from Berkeley 1927 and became a leading figure in the Southern literary revival. A faculty member at Vanderbilt 1931–34; Louisiana State University 1934–42; the University of Minnesota 1942–50; and Yale University 1950–56, 1961–73, Warren was a respected critic. Among his collections of poems is Brother to Dragons (1953).