Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world."Following the publication of his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and a novel. 

He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm during his lifetime. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. Bloom was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995. Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literary departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). 

He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University. Bloom was a member of the Yale English Department from 1955 to 2019, teaching his final class four days before his death. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1985. From 1988 to 2004, Bloom was Berg Professor of English at New York University while maintaining his position at Yale. 

In 2010, he became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new institution in Savannah, Georgia, focusing on primary texts. Fond of endearments, Bloom would address male and female students and friends as "my dear." Bloom married Jeanne Gould in 1958. They had two children. In a 2005 interview, Jeanne said that she and Harold were both atheists, which he denied: "No, no, I'm not an atheist. It's no fun being an atheist."

Bloom was the subject of a 1990 article in GQ titled "Bloom in Love," which accused him of having affairs with female graduate students. Bloom described the article as a "disgusting piece of character assassination." Bloom's friend and colleague, the biographer R. W. B. Lewis, said in 1994, "[Bloom's] wandering, I gather, is a thing of the past. I hate to say it, but he rather bragged about it, so that wasn't very secret for several years."In a 2004 article for New York magazine, Naomi Wolf accused Bloom of placing his hand on her inner thigh while she was an undergraduate student at Yale University in 1983. 

Bloom "vigorously denied" the allegation. Bloom taught well into his later years, swearing that he would need to be removed from the classroom "in a great big body bag." He had open heart surgery in 2002 and broke his back after experiencing a fall in 2008. He died at a hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, on October 14, 2019. He was 89 years old