ABRAMS, M.H.

born July 23, 1912, Long Branch, N.J., U.S. in full Meyer Howard Abrams American literary critic known for his analysis of the Romantic period in English literature. Following his graduation from Harvard University in 1934, Abrams studied for a year at the University of Cambridge before returning to his alma mater to earn an M.A. (1937) and a Ph.D. (1940). He joined the faculty of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., in 1945, becoming a full professor in 1953 and professor emeritus in 1983. His numerous and far-flung fellowships included positions at the University of Toronto, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Oxford. Abrams wrote his first book, The Milk of Paradise: The Effects of Opium Visions on the Works of De Quincey, Crabbe, Francis Thompson, and Coleridge (1934), while an undergraduate. With his second work, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953), he joined the front rank of Romantic-literature scholars. The book's title denotes the two metaphors by which Abrams characterized 18th- and 19th-century English literature, respectively-the former as a cool, intellectual reflection of outward reality and the latter as an illumination shed by artists upon their inner and outer worlds. His later work Natural Supernaturalism (1971) explores a broader reach of the Romantic sensibility, including its religious implications and its influence on modern literature. Critical essays by Abrams were collected in The Correspondent Breeze (1984) and Doing Things with Texts (1989). He served as general editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature (1962; 5th ed., 1986).