American literary critic and social historian who chronicled the writers of the Lost Generation of the 1920s and their successors. As literary editor of
The New Republic from 1929 to 1944, with a generally leftist position on cultural questions, he played a significant part in many of the literary and political battles of the Depression years... Cowley revived the literary reputation of William Faulkner with his editing of the anthology
The Portable Faulkner (1946). -
Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literaturemore