Frederick Newton Arvin (August 23, 1900 – March 21, 1963) was a literary critic, historian and academic.

A native of Valparaiso, Indiana, Frederick Newton Arvin studied English Literature at Harvard and was inspired by Van Wyck Brooks. Leaving Harvard in 1922, Arvin taught at several high schools before finding tenure at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

A homosexual, Newton Arvin endured a brief and unhappy marriage and is said to have had an affair with Truman Capote during the 1940s.[citation needed]

Arvin often wrote about political issues, until he came to national attention with the publication in 1950 of Herman Melville, a critical biography of Herman Melville, the writer today most famous as the author of Moby-Dick. Herman Melville won the second annual National Book Award for non-fiction.

Other works by Arvin included a similar analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter. Another book on the same pattern, about poet and writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and entitled Longfellow, His Life and Work, was finished shortly before Arvin`s death.

[edit] Scandal

In 1960, officers of the Massachusetts State Police arrested Arvin on pornography-related charges after investigations by the office of the United States Postmaster General (then Arthur Ellsworth Summerfield) into soft-core homosexually-themed pictures sent to Arvin by mail. The resulting scandal destroyed his career and resulted in the firing of two colleagues, Edward Spofford and Joel Dorius, whom he gave up in exchange for leniency in sentencing.

He is buried at Union Street/Old City Cemetery in Porter County, Indiana. [1]

In his will, Truman Capote set up a literary trust and honored Arvin by establishing the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin, which since 1994 has been awarded annually by the University of Iowa. It is said to be the largest annual cash prize for literary criticism in the English language.[2].

In 2001, Barry Werth`s book The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: a literary life shattered by scandal, was published.

Mount Holyoke College held a symposium about Newton Arvin in 2001.