Cleanth Brooks was born October 16, 1906 in Murray, Kentucky, the son of a Methodist minister, the Reverend Cleanth Brooks Sr., and Bessie Lee Witherspoon Brooks (Leitch 2001). He was one of three boys in the family. A natural born William, and Murray Brooks, who was actually an 'adopted brother', whose name began as Hewitt Witherspoon. Bessie Lee Witherspoon kidnapped him from her brother, Forrest Bedford Witherspoon, as a young baby, after the natural mother died. She later was able to change his name to 'Murray' Brooks and continued to raise him as her own, causing quite a rift in her own family and alienating herself from Cleanth and William. Cleanth mentioned on more than one occasion that she so doted on Murray (Hewitt) that she no longer had a relationship with Cleanth and William. Attending McTyeire School, a private academy, he received a classical education and went on to study at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he received his B.A. in 1928. In that same year he received his Master of Arts from Tulane University and went on to study at Exeter College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. There he received his B.A. (with honors) in 1931 and his Bachelor of Literature the following year. Also that year he returned to the United States and from 1932 to 1947 he taught English at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. In 1934, he married Edith Amy Blanchord.
During his studies at Vanderbilt, he met literary critics and future collaborators Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Andrew Lytle, and Donald Davidson (Singh 1991). Studying with Ransom and Warren, Brooks became involved in two significant literary movements: the Southern Agrarians and the Fugitives (Singh 1991).
The Fugitives, all Southern and actively engaged in the writing of poetry, included such notables as John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, and Robert Penn Warren. They met Saturday evenings to read and discuss poetry written by members of the group. The discussion was based on intensive readings and included considerations of a poemÕs form, structure, meter, rhyme scheme, and imagery. This way of reading poetry became the foundation on which the New Critical movement was based and helped shape BrooksÕ approach to criticism.
While attending the University of Oxford, Brooks continued his friendship with fellow Vanderbilt graduate and Rhodes Scholar, Robert Penn Warren. In 1934, Warren joined Brooks in the English department at Louisiana State, and a year later they founded The Southern Review. Until 1942, they co-edited the journal, publishing the works by many influential authors, including Eudora Welty, Kenneth Burke, and Ford Madox Ford. The journal was known for its criticism and creative writing, marking it as one of the leading journals of the time.
Among his many achievements as a scholar and a teacher, between 1964 and 1966 Brooks served as the cultural attachˇ for the American embassy in London. Further, he held memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the American Philosophical Society (Singh 1991).
The National Endowment for the Humanities selected Brooks for the 1985 Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. He delivered the lecture both in Washington and at Tulane University in New Orleans, and it was subsequently included as "Literature in a Technological Age" in a collection of his essays.