David V. Erdman (November 4, 1911, in Omaha, NE – October 14, 2001[1]) was an American literary critic, editor, and Professor Emeritus of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
After graduating from Princeton in 1936, he became a professor of English at the Agriculture, Mechanical and Normal College (now the University of Arkansas at Monticello).
For the next three years, he did not hold position at a university, but rather worked for the United Auto Workers-Congress of Industrial Organizations (UAW-CIO) in Detroit, MI as an editor in the education department, from 1943 until 1946.
Thompson's Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law (1993) cites the pivotal importance of Erdman's scholarship.
Linda Freeman attributes radical theologian Thomas J.J. Altizer's readings of Blake to time working with Erdman at Stony Brook.