Critic Harold Bloom dies

Harold Bloom, a critic who was regarded as a giant of the literary world, has died aged 89.

Bloom was born in East Bronx, New York, on July 11 1930.

He became known as one of the most famous and controversial of all American literary critics.

Bloom could quote English and American poetry classics by heart and wrote more than 40 books.

He grew up in a poor Yiddishspeaking family to father William and mother Paula.

Bloom claimed to have taught himself to read Yiddish by the age of three, and Hebrew by four.

He overcame considerable hostility to become a teaching fellow in 1955, and a full professor in 1965 at Yale University.

He gained a reputation as an innovative reader of Romantic poetry.

His books Shelley’s Mythmaking (1959) and The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry (1961) were written at a time when academic opinion about Romanticism was emerging from the shadow of TS Eliot.

In The Western Canon (1994), he covered 26 authors in 600 pages, with Shakespeare as the hallmark.

However, his opinions did not always prove popular.

Bloom caused outrage after accusing celebrated black American writers such as Maya Angelou of writing “semi-literate trash”.

In 1988 he had a joint appointment as professor at New York University, teaching alternate weeks in New Haven and New York – he called both institutions equally filled with hypocrites and charlatans.

Admissions into his Shakespeare classes at Yale were competitive.

Bloom continued to teach at Yale and continued to write prolific pieces.

He is survived by his wife Jeanne Gould, whom he married in 1958, and their sons Daniel and David.

Harold Bloom was a prolific critic and a Yale University professor