Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom (1930–2019) was an American literary critic and longtime professor at Yale University. He became widely known for influential studies of poetic tradition and literary authority, including *The Anxiety of Influence* (1973), which introduced his theory of how writers contend with their predecessors. Bloom also wrote *The Western Canon* (1994), a controversial defense of a core body of major works and authors. Over a prolific career, he published books on Shakespeare, Romanticism, and the Bible’s literary impact, as well as numerous introductions and critical essays. He was recognized as a prominent, often polemical voice in late 20th-century literary criticism.