If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false.

M. H. Abrams (1912-2015) was an American literary critic, best known for his work on Romanticism. He is best known for his book, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953). Abrams was a professor of English at Cornell University from 1945 to 1983, and was the founding editor of the Norton Anthology of English Literature. He wrote numerous books and essays on Romanticism, including Natural Supernaturalism (1971), which helped to define the field, and The Correspondent Breeze: Essays on English Romanticism (1984). He was also a major influence on the New Historicism movement. Abrams was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, and in 2005, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.