Skip to main content

Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley (1898 – 1989) was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist. He was a leading chronicler and editor of "Lost Generation" writers.

During 1920s Cowley lived in Paris and became friends with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Ezra Pound, E. E. Cummings, and others. His 1934 book Exile's Return was the first published in the United States about the "Lost Generation",

Cowley edited a new edition of Leaves of Grass in 1959 which helped revive Walt Whitman's reputation. He was also influential in establishing the careers of Jack Kerouac and John Cheever.

Cowley's other books included The Literary Tradition (1954) Black Cargoes, A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (1962), Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age (1966), Think Back on Us (1967), Collected Poems (1968), Lesson of the Masters (1971) and A Second Flowering (1973).

Articles by this Author

Middle Passage, February 1962 | Vol. 13, No. 2
Packed like animals in the holds of slave ships, Negroes bound for America were prey to disease, brutal masters, and their own suicidal melancholy.
Nathaniel was poor and sunk in his solitude; Sophia seemed a hopeless invalid, but a late-flower love gave them at last“a perfect Eden”