Anna Balakian

Of Armenian descent, Anna Balakian was born in Constantinople. At the age of 11 she moved with her family to New Britain, Connecticut. She earned the bachelor's degree at Hunter College, the master's and doctorate degree at Columbia University. While in graduate school, she taught French literature and language full-time at the Hunter College High School.

She published her first book, The Literary Origins of Surrealism in 1947. In this groundbreaking study of the founders of modern French poetry, Anna Balakian placed avant-garde writers and artists against the background of French and German romanticism. In 1953 she began her long career at New York University culminating in her eight-year chairmanship of the Department of Comparative Literature. Balakian's next book, Surrealism: The Road to the Absolute (1959), is an exposition of, and apologia for, surrealist literature and art. In The Symbolist Movement: A Critical Appraisal (1969) she gives a concise yet detailed account of symbolist poetry. Her André Breton: Magus of Surrealism (1971) was the first full-scale biography of the founder of the surrealist movement.

She and her sister, Nona Balakian, a literary critic and an editor at The New York Times Book Review who died in 1991,[1] were members of a literary circle that also included the playwright William Saroyan and the diarist Anaïs Nin.[2] The Balakian sisters were the grandnieces of the archbishop and Armenian genocide survivor Grigoris Balakian and the aunts of the poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Balakian.[3]

In 2004, the International Comparative Literature Association established the Anna Balakian Prize to promote scholarly research by younger comparatists and to honor the memory of her.[4]