Morton N. Cohen

Morton Norton Cohen (27 February 1921 – 12 June 2017) was an American author and scholar, and Professor Emeritus of the City University of New York. He is best known for extensive studies of children's author Lewis Carroll including the 1995 biography Lewis Carroll: A Biography.

Life

Cohen was born in Calgary, Canada, and grew on the North Shore of Boston. He taught English at West Virginia University, Syracuse University, Rutgers University and the City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In addition to his work on Charles Dodgson, he produced studies of Henry Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling and other Victorian subjects, as well as children's literature, travel articles and fiction. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of Literature in 1996. The Modern Language Association set up the biennial Morton N. Cohen Award for a Distinguished Edition of Letters in 1989. The first award was given in 1991. Under the terms of the award, the "winning collection will be one that provides readers with a clear, accurate, and readable text; necessary background information; and succinct and eloquent introductory material and annotations. The edited collection should be in itself a work of literature."

Selected works

All five works are books (October 2018).

• H. Rider Haggard, His Life and Works – PhD thesis, Columbia University, issued 1958 in microfilm
• Rider Haggard: His Life and Works (London: Hutchinson, 1960)
• Rudyard Kipling to Rider Haggard: The Record of a Friendship (Hutchinson, 1965)
• The Letters of Lewis Carroll, 2 vols., ed. Cohen with the assistance of Roger Lancelyn Green (Oxford University Press, 1979)
• The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll, edited by Cohen (London: Macmilan, 1982); (London: Papermac, 1996)
• Lewis Carroll and the House of Macmillan, ed. Cohen and Anita Gandolfo (Cambridge University Press, 1987)
• Lewis Carroll: Interviews and Recollections, ed. Cohen (University of Iowa Press, 1989)
• Lewis Carroll: A Biography (Macmillan, 1995)
• Reflections in a Looking Glass: A Centennial Celebration of Lewis Carroll, Photographer (New York: Aperture, 1998)
• Lewis Carroll & His Illustrators: Collaborations and Correspondence, 1865–1898, ed. Cohen and Edward Wakeling (Macmillan, 2003)