Lionel Trilling

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Lionel Trilling (July 4, 1905 – November 5, 1975) was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. Trilling was one of the group known as "The New York Intellectuals" and was viewed as one of the great literary critics of his time. He is probably most famous to the general public for his introduction to a 1952 reissue of George Orwell's book, Homage to Catalonia. He was also a regular contributor to the Partisan Review.

Trilling was born in New York City to a Jewish family. He was educated at Columbia University, where he was a classmate of Whittaker Chambers, and received his B.A. (1925), M.A. (1926), and Ph.D. (1938). Trilling began teaching literature at Columbia in 1932 and became a full professor in 1948. His one novel, The Middle of the Journey, about an affluent Communist couple, was published in 1947. His most famous volume of essays was the 1950 The Liberal Imagination. Another collection of essays is entitled The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent. He is the author of Sincerity and Authenticity, an exploration on the idea of self as a moral quotient in post-Age of Enlightenment Western civilization, and Beyond Culture, a collection on essays dealing with the attitudes of modernity.

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