Yvor Winters was born in Chicago, Illinois. He attended the University of Chicago, the University of Colorado (where he received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees), and Stanford University, where he earned a Ph.D. For two years he taught in coal-mining camp towns in New Mexico. He then taught at the University of Idaho and at Stanford University. He famously criticized the work of such writers as T.S. Eliot, arguing that art must act as “moral judgment.”