John Brown: The Making of a Martyr

In John Brown: The Making of a Martyr, his first book, published in 1929, Robert Penn Warren gives readers a foretaste of the rich blend of historical research and the art of a master storyteller that would characterize his novels…

In John Brown: The Making of a Martyr, his first book, published in 1929, Robert Penn Warren gives readers a foretaste of the rich blend of historical research and the art of a master storyteller that would characterize his novels for the next six decades. Though also a biography of enduring competence and relevance, John Brown is primarily an artistic portraiture of the tormented man whose bloody deeds helped precipitate the Civil War. John Brown is the first of Warren's murderous idealists, a type that has prominently troubled the world stage in modern time. Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989), the first Poet Laureate of the United States, was a major literary figure of the 20th Century. Besides volumes of his poetry, he published eight novels, of which All the King's Men is the best known.