Lionel Trilling

Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) was a highly influential American literary critic and Professor of English at Columbia University in New York. His most influential book was The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (1950).

A Communist when young, Trilling turned anti-communist in the 1930s. Trilling was an architect of liberal anti-communism and political pluralism who sought a reasoned moderation as the antithesis to Soviet communism. Rejecting his Jewish heritage he became an advocate of secularism.

Further reading

• Kimmage, Michael. The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (2009)