Leon Edel was an American literary critic, biographer, and professor who won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1961 for his four-volume biography of Henry James. He was born in Philadelphia in 1907 and studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. He taught at several universities, including Columbia University and the University of Toronto. He wrote biographies of other authors, such as Matthew Arnold, Mary Shelley, and Sigmund Freud. He also wrote several books on literary criticism and edited the works of Henry James. He died in 1997.