Author. His most famous novel, “The Cardinal” (1950), was filmed in 1963 by Otto Preminger with Tom Tryon in the title role. Other novels are “The Perfect Round” (1945; filmed as “Americana” in 1981), “The Great Snow” (1947), and “Water of Life” (1960). Verse collections: “Children of Morningside” (1924), “Buck Fever” (1929), “Second Wisdom” (1937), and “The Enchanted Grindstone and Other Poems” (1952). Nonfiction includes “Stout Cortez: a Biography of the Spanish Conquest” (1931) and “Science Versus Crime” (1935), a survey of then-modern criminology techniques. He is probably best remembered for the literary study “A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake” (1944), which he wrote with Joseph Campbell. On December 23, 1960, during one of his frequent stays at New York's Columbia University Club, he fell asleep in a hot bath after taking a sedative. Three weeks later, on January 13, 1961, he died of complications from the resulting second- and third-degree burns.

Author. His most famous novel, “The Cardinal” (1950), was filmed in 1963 by Otto Preminger with Tom Tryon in the title role. Other novels are “The Perfect Round” (1945; filmed as “Americana” in 1981), “The Great Snow” (1947), and “Water of Life” (1960). Verse collections: “Children of Morningside” (1924), “Buck Fever” (1929), “Second Wisdom” (1937), and “The Enchanted Grindstone and Other Poems” (1952). Nonfiction includes “Stout Cortez: a Biography of the Spanish Conquest” (1931) and “Science Versus Crime” (1935), a survey of then-modern criminology techniques. He is probably best remembered for the literary study “A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake” (1944), which he wrote with Joseph Campbell. On December 23, 1960, during one of his frequent stays at New York's Columbia University Club, he fell asleep in a hot bath after taking a sedative. Three weeks later, on January 13, 1961, he died of complications from the resulting second- and third-degree burns.