"Drawing principally on the work of critic James Olney, Joseph R. Millichap shows how Robert Penn Warren's critical engagement with major American authors-Faulkner, Ransom, Melville, Whittier, Dreiser, and Hawthorne-generated both insightful criticism as well as a working out of Warren's own autobiography under the shadowy influence of these leading writers. While Warren himself occasionally acknowledged the autobiographical nature of creative work-especially in his poetry-Millichap discovers similar dynamics at work when Warren takes up influential writers in his criticism"--