F. W. Dupee (June 25, 1904 – January 19, 1979) was a highly distinguished American literary critic, essayist for Partisan Review and the New York Review of Books, and professor emeritus of English at Columbia University. He was an eminent scholar of Henry James, and also wrote on contemporary poetry, fiction, and American culture. Dupee edited editions of Austen, Dickens, Gertrude Stein, and Leon Trotsky. He made the transition from being a radical Marxist who mainly wrote political essays to being one of the most well-respected literary critics of his time. Dupee died of a drug overdose in 1979. [1]
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Born Frederick Wilcox Dupee in Chicago on June 25, 1904, he was the son of Leroy Church and Frances Wilcox Dupee. He earned his Ph.B degree at Yale University in 1927 and taught at Bowdoin College and Bard College before going to Columbia University in 1948, where he taught modernist literature.
Dupee was a Marxist, and an organizer for the Communist Party in New York City in the mid 1930's. He was a founding editor of the Partisan Review and the literary editor of the New Masses. By 1937 he had had become disillusioned with the Party, although he maintained his socialist thought and activism for the rest of his life.