Person in history
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom, American literary critic (born 1930)
Life at a glance
- Died
- 2019 · October 14
- Known as
- literary historian, writer, literary critic, journalist, and literary theorist. Citizenship: United States
Their story
Who they were
Harold Bloom, American literary critic (born 1930)
Early life
Educated at: Yale University, Cornell University, and Bronx High School of Science.
Early life and education Bloom was born in New York City on July 11, 1930, [ 1 ] to Paula (née Lev) and William Bloom. He lived in the Bronx at 1410 Grand Concourse . [ 2 ] [ 3 ] He was raised as an Orthodox Jew in a Yiddish -speaking household, where he learned literary Hebrew ; [ 4 ] he learned English at the age of six. [ 5 ] Bloom's father, a garment worker, was born in Odesa and his Lithuanian Jewish mother, a homemaker, near Brest-Litovsk in what is today Belarus .
Path and career
Worked with / for: New York University and Yale University.
Awards / honours: Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Fellows Program, Catalonia International Prize, and John Addison Porter Prize.
Why this date
Harold Bloom appears on our October 14 calendar for 2019 as a death entry.
Sources
Cite this page
“Harold Bloom”, What's On This Date, https://whatsonthisdate.com/app/people/harold-bloom, accessed October 27, 2026.
Cite the underlying source as well — the source links above go to the record this entry is adapted from.
Questions about Harold Bloom
When did Harold Bloom die?
October 14 2019.
Who else was born on this day?
The date page lists everyone we hold for that calendar day.
Text adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0 and from Wikidata (CC0). Images come from Wikimedia Commons; credit and licence are shown with each image. Editorial entries are © What's On This Date. Sources & licensing · How this site works.