Brooks was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1886 and graduated from Harvard University in 1908. As a student he published his first book, a collection of poetry called Verses by Two Undergraduates, co-written with his friend John Hall Wheelock.[1]
Brooks was a long-time resident of Bridgewater, Connecticut, which built a town library wing in his name. Although a decade-long fund-raising effort was abandoned in 1972, a hermit in Los Angeles, Charles E. Piggott, with no connection to Bridgewater surprised the town by leaving money for the library in his will. With $210,000 raised, the library addition went up in 1980.[5]
Among his works, the book The Ordeal of Mark Twain (1920) analyzes the literary progression of Samuel L. Clemens and attributes shortcomings to Clemens's mother and wife. In 1925 he published a translation from French of the 1920 biography of Henry David Thoreau by Leon Bazalgette, entitled Henry Thoreau, Bachelor of Nature.
His influential 1918 essay "On Creating a Usable Past" argued that the United States lacked its own coherent cultural arts tradition.[6] Historian Constance Rourke engaged his claim and set out to show a unique American tradition.[7]
Schlueter, Jennifer (December 2008). "'A theatrical race': American Identity and Popular Performance in the Writings of Constance M. Rourke". Theatre Journal. 60 (4). Baltimore: 529–543. doi:10.1353/tj.0.0090.
Blake, Casey Nelson (1990). Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank & Lewis Mumford. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN0-8078-1935-2.