Agrarian Reunion Proceedings
The Southern Literary Festival at the University of Dallas
April 1968
Biography/History
Andrew Nelson Lytle was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in 1902 and had a long life and career as a writer, novelist, teacher, editor, and farmer.
His education included the Sewanee Military Academy, Vanderbilt University (B.A. 1925), a year of study in France, and two years at the Yale School of Drama. He was the
editor at the Sewanee Review and while there published the work of Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, Flannery O’Connor, Peter Taylor, Katherine
Anne Porter among others. Lytle contributed the essay “The Hind Tit” to I’ll Take My Stand. He was awarded many honors for his work as a man of letters. He died
in December 1995 in Monteagle, Tennessee.
Frank Lawrence Owsley was born in Montgomery County, Alabama in 1890. He received his bachelor of science degree in 1912 from the Alabama Polytechnic
Institute in Auburn, Alabama, graduating first in his class. He received his master of arts degree in history from the University of Chicago in 1917. He served briefly
in the armed forces during World War I, before returning to graduate work at the University of Chicago. He joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University in 1920. He wrote
the essay entitled “The Irrepressible Conflict” for I’ll Take My Stand: the South and the Agrarian Tradition published by Harper Brothers of New York and London
in 1930. He died suddenly in 1956 while in England as a Fulbright lecturer.
John Crowe Ransom noted poet, critic, educator and editor was born April 30, 1888 in Pulaski, Tennessee. He graduated from Vanderbilt University in
1909, was a Rhodes Scholar at Christ Church, Oxford, 1910-1913, and joined the faculty at Vanderbilt in 1914, where he taught English until 1937. While at Vanderbilt,
Ransom was a major figure in both the Fugitive and Agrarian groups. He published in the Fugitive magazine and contributed the introduction “A Statement of
Priciples” and the initial essay “Reconstructed but Unregenerate” for I’ll Take My Stand. Ransom accepted a position at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio as
professor of poetry and later founded and edited an important literary quarterly, The Kenyon Review (1939-1959) His works of poetry include Poems About God
(1919), Chills and Fever (1924), and Selected Poems (1945, 1963, 1969). Among the many honors and awards he received were the Bollingen Award in 1951
and the National Book Award for poetry in 1963. He died in 1974 at the age of eighty six.
John Orley Allen Tate was born near Winchester, Kentucky November 19, 1899. He graduated from Vanderbilt University, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa
in 1922. He was one of the Fugitive poets and published the essay “Remarks on the Southern Religion” in I’ll Take My Stand. In 1936 he was co-editor with
Herbert Agar of Who Owns America, a later Agrarian treatise. Tate was an accomplished man of letters, publishing throughout his lifetime poetry, criticism, and
a novel. He was also a teacher and editor. Allen Tate died in Nashville in February 1979.
Robert Penn Warren was born April 24, 1905 in Guthrie, Kentucky where he grew up. He graduated from Vanderbilt in 1925, and while there joined the
Fugitive poets and published in the Fugitive magazine. He was a Rhodes Scholar at New College in Oxford from 1928-1930, and while at Oxford he wrote his essay
“The Briar Patch” for I’ll Take My Stand. Warren was a poet, novelist, essayist, critic, and teacher and as one of the foremost men of letters in America he
received many honors and awards for his work including three Pulitzer Prizes. In February of 1986 he was named the first official Poet Laureate of the United States. He
died September 15, 1989.
Scope and Contents
This collection of 3 Hollinger boxes (1.26 linear feet) contains reel to reel audio tapes and transcipts (original and photocopies) of the proceedings of the
Agrarian Reunion at the Southern Literary Festival which took place at the University of Dallas in Texas on April 19, 20, 21 1968. Participants in the Reunion were
Agrarians Andrew Lytle, Frank Owsley, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren. All had contributed to the Agrarian manifesto I’ll Take My Stand
which was published in 1930.
Other participants in these conversations were Melvin E. Bradford, author of books on Allen Tate and Andrew Lytle; Thomas Daniel Young, professor of English at
Vanderbilt University and author of books on John Crowe Ransom and other southern writers; Thomas H. Landess, author of a work on Caroline Gordon; and Dr. Louise Cowan
of the University of Dallas who was the moderator of these conversations. She is the author of The Fugitive Group: A Literary History and The Southern Critics.
Box Listing
Box 1
- Transcripts—Press Conference, April 19, 1968 (Originals)
- Transcripts—Press Conference, April 19, 1968 (Photocopies)
- Transcripts—Session I, Agrarian Conversations, April 20, 1968 (Originals)
- Transcripts—Session I, Agrarian Conversations, April 20, 1968 (Photocopies)
- Transcipts—Session II, Agrarian Conversations, April 20, 1968 (Originals)
- Transcripts—Session II, Agrarian Conversations, April 20, 1968 (Photocopies)
- Transcripts—Session III, Agrarian Conversations, April 21, 1968 (Originals)
- Transcripts—Session III, Agrarian Conversations, April 21, 1968 (Photocopies)
- Transcipts—Session IV, Agrarian Conversations, April 21, 1968 (Originals)
- Transcripts—Session IV, Agrarian Conversations, April 21, 1968 (Photocopies)
- Tapes—Andrew Lytle (side 1); Press Conference, April 19, 1968 (side 2)
- Tapes—Andrew Lytle (talk on Joyce)
- Tapes—Andrew Lytle Interview
Box 2
- Tapes—John Crowe Ransom, April 19, 1968
- Tapes—Allen Tate, April 19, 1968
- Tapes—Robert Penn Warren, April 20, 1968
- Tapes—Session I, Agrarian Conversations, April 20, 1968
- Tapes—Session II, Agrarian Conversations, April 20, 1968 (side 1); Session I, Agrarian Conversations, April 20, 1968 (side 2)
- Tapes—Session I, April 20, 1968; Session II, April 20, 1968; Session III, April 21, 1968 (side 1); Andrew Lytle, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren (side 2)
Box 3
- Tapes—Session II, Agrarian Conversations, April 20, 1968
- Tapes—Session III, Agrarian Conversations, April 21, 1968
- Tapes—Session III, Agrarian Conversations, April 21, 1968
- Tapes—Session IV, Agrarian Conversations, April 21, 1968
- Tapes—Session IV, Agrarian Conversations, April 21, 1968
- Tapes—Session (?), Agrarian Conversations
Overview | Complete Finding Aid (pdf)
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