Introduction


Robert Penn Warren
A successful novelist and poet, Robert Penn Warren has been primarily remembered for his political morality tale All the King’s Men. The book, written in the 1940s, was far ahead of its time in depicting the Machiavellian dealings of Southern politician Willie Stark. The novel was so successful it spawned two film versions—a 1949 adaptation that won an Academy Award and a 2006 remake that was met with scathing reviews. Still, neither the highs nor the lows of those adaptations could affect the achievement of Warren’s seminal book. Warren’s background as poet is evident throughout the novel and deepens its rich characterizations, making Willie Stark one of the most unforgettable characters in twentieth-century literature.

Essential Facts

  1. Warren studied at some of the most highly regarded institutions of learning, including Vanderbilt, U.C. Berkeley, Yale, and most notably Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar.
  2. Warren penned his most famous work, All the King’s Men, while teaching at the University of Minnesota.
  3. In his youth, Warren was a member of two writers groups: The Fugitives and The Young Agrarians.
  4. As a young man, Warren wrote in favor of segregation. He later changed his beliefs and wrote numerous pieces in favor of the Civil Rights movement, including Who Speaks for the Negro, a collection that contained an interview with Malcolm X.
  5. Warren is the only writer to have won the Pulitzer Prize for both poetry and fiction.