Born in New York City in 1930 and educated at Cornell and Yale universities, Harold Bloom has been an original mind and provocative presence on the international library scene for decades. Professor Bloom has authored dozens of major books of literary criticism and hundreds of articles, reviews, and editorial introductions—among them a vast collection of critical volumes for Infobase’s Bloom’s imprint, in popular series such as Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations, Bloom’s Guides, Bloom’s Shakespeare Through the Ages, and many more.
Professor Bloom’s publications with Infobase make up the backbone of the company’s Bloom’s Literature database, which contains biographical overviews of the lives of great authors and literary criticism of their works, as well as full-length videos of classic plays and films, thousands of full-text poems with corresponding analytical entries, more than 9,000 discussion questions that provide research and writing suggestions, and student-friendly guidance on how to write about the most frequently assigned authors and works of literature.
Professor Bloom recently took the time to pen his thoughts about Bloom’s Literature. Here is what he had to say:
The database that bears my name is a superb resource for schools and for colleges. It provides a comprehensive library of critical commentaries, frequently including my own introductions, as well as an extraordinary collection of vital and illuminating data. Both individual authors and particular works are richly documented and interpreted from many viewpoints. Yet that is only the beginning of the wealth of this database. Teachers and students of Shakespeare, to take only a single example, will be able to see extraordinary productions of the world’s greatest plays, enacted by actresses and actors who excel both in gesture and in verbal felicity.
Our continued existence as a nation depends to some extent upon the augmentation and diversification of our educational system. In a digital age, where problems of storage multiply, this Infobase enterprise provides almost all the material that teachers and students could require in broadening their understanding.
Canonical literature, however one chooses to designate it, has grown so vast that even a long lifetime, like my own, of incessant reading, writing, and teaching, faces a profusion that can dishearten unless it can be organized. The Infobase program is a unique resource for meeting the urgencies and necessities of our common educational situation.
—Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University
Click on the links below for more information about Bloom’s Literature:
