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Happy 100th, M.H. Abrams

Cornell to host a massive birthday for its celebrity mainstay

by
Adam Chandler
July 20, 2012

Cornell is throwing a weekend fete for a century of M.H. Abrams. The agenda includes a conversation, a reading, and an open mic with the literaty icon and critic. Events will be live-streamed here. In the meantime, read Adam Kirsch’s piece on the legendary M.H. Abrams:

Of that pioneering generation, one of the last survivors is M.H. Abrams, who will celebrate his 100th birthday on July 23. (Abrams is also still publishing: In August, Norton will bring out a new collection of his essays, The Fourth Dimension of a Poem.) Abrams’ name will be familiar to just about every English major of the last half-century, if only because it appears at the top of the spine of each edition of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, which Abrams created in 1962.

Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.