Overview
Robert Penn Warren, born in Guthrie, Kentucky in 1905, was one of the twentieth century's most prominent American writers. He was a distinguished novelist, poet, literary critic, and essayist. His chief influences in his life and on his writing were probably his family and country boy background. He had an entertaining but disciplined childhood, growing up on his grandfather's farm in Kentucky. A very friendly person, he befriended fellow poetry enthusiasts in college, where he fed off of their ideas and aspired to publish his works. Images of nature and descriptions of emotions are very common in his poetry. Up until his death in 1989 he held numerous important literary positions in colleges and literature associations.