John Crowe Ransom

John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974), American poet, a leader in the southern literary revival of the 1920s, and an influential literary critic. Born in Pulaski, Tennessee, Ransom was educated at Vanderbilt University; from 1910 to 1913 he was a Rhodes scholar (see Rhodes Scholarships). Ransom taught English at Vanderbilt from 1914 to 1937 and was professor of poetry at Kenyon College (Gambier, Ohio) from 1937 to 1958. He was also editor of the Kenyon Review from 1939 to 1959. With Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, and others, he founded and edited the influential literary periodical The Fugitive (1922-1925).

Most of Ransom's poetry was written in the 1920s. It is marked by wit, economy, and emotional restraint; his favorite motifs include the struggle between desire and duty and the difference between the real and the ideal. Ransom contributed to the volume of essays I'll Take My Stand (1930), which decried the industrialization of the American South. His own collection of essays, The New Criticism (1941), helped to establish a school of criticism that analyzed the structure and elements of literature apart from its historical context (see Criticism, Literary). His other critical works include The World's Body (1938) and Beating the Bushes: Selected Essays 1941-1970 (1972). Ransom's books of verse include Chills and Fever (1924) and Collected Poems (1963).