August 18, 1893
Donald Grady Davidson born in Campbellsville, near Pulaski, Tennessee to parents
Elma Wells Davidson and Wiliam Bluford Davidson. Both of his parents were teachers
- his father a schoolteacher and his mother a piano teacher.
1905 - 1909
Attends and graduates from Branham and Hughes School in Spring Hill, TN.
1909
Begins a B. A. program at Vanderbilt, drops out for financial reasons, returns
in 1914.
1910 -1912
Davidson teaches at the Cedar Hill Institute in Cedar Hill, Tennessee.
1912 - 1914
Davidson teaches in the rural community of Mooresville.
Fall 1914
Returns to Vanderbilt at the age of 21.
1915, 1916
Attends George Peabody College for Teachers as a summer student.
1916 - 1917
Teaches in Pulaski, Tennessee where he meets Theresa Sherrer (later to be a
legal scholar and artist and Davidson's wife ).
1917
Davidson does not graduate with his class in 1916, but receives his B. A. in
absentia from Vanderbilt.
May 1917 - June 1919
Davidson serves in the U. S. Military .
May 1917
Davidson joins the first officer candidates who leave Vanderbilt for Fort Oglethorpe
in May 1917; commissioned 2nd lieutenant in 324th Infantry, 81st Division, U.
S. Army.
August 1917
Lands in Liverpool England.
August 16, 1918
81st Division assembled in Tonnerre France; Davidson sees action in Defensive
Sector and Meuse-Argonne offensive; he becomes a first lieutenant .
June 8, 1918
Davidson marries Theresa Sherrer in Greenville, South Carolina while assigned
to Camp Sevier.
March 26, 1919
Mary Theresa Davidson born, the only child of Theresa and Donald Davidson (And
later Mrs. Eric Bell, Jr. ).
June 7, 1919
Leaves to return to America on the USS Martha Washington and arrives in Charleston,
South Carolina in mid June.
1919
Davidson begins work on Master's Thesis on Joseph Conrad at Vanderbilt
August 1919 - 1920
Davidson teaches at Kentucky Wesleyan College, Owensboro, Kentucky
Summer 1920
Davidson has a job as a reporter for the Evening Tennesseean
Fall 1920
Davidson begins a 44 year career in the English Department at Vanderbilt University:
1922
M. A. from Vanderbilt (Master's Thesis on Joseph Conrad)
April 1922 - Dec. 1925
Fugitive magazine published-Davidson co-founder, 1922 and co-editor, 1922-1924
1924
An Outland Piper. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Sept. 7, 1924 - Oct. 26, 1930
Editor of "The Book Review and Literary Page" of The Tennessean
and "The Weekly Review-A Page About Books".
1925
Article derived from Davidson's Master's Thesis published in the Spring 1925
issue of the Sewanee Review, "Joseph Conrad's Directed Indirections."
Work on the Master's degree was begun in 1919, and the degree awarded 1922.
1926
Poetry Society of South Carolina Southern Prize for "Fire on Belmont Street"
1927
The Tall Men. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
November 1930
I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition. By Twelve
Southerners. New York : Harper and Brothers.
Davidson's essay titled " A Mirror for Artists "
June 1931
Davidson joins the faculty of the Breadloaf School of English of Middlebury
College for the summers of 1931 - 1967, Ripton, Vermont.
1934
Culture in the South. Edited by W. T. Couch. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press. Davidson contributes the essay " The Trend of
Literature."
Who Owns America? A New Declaration of Independence. Edited by Herbert Agar and Allen Tate. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1936 Davidson's essay titled " That This Nation May Endure-The Need for Political Regionalism."
1937
British Poetry of the Eighteen Nineties. New York: Doubleday.
Davidson is the editor and author of introduction, notes, and biographical sketches.
1938
The Attack on Leviathan: Regionalism and Nationalism in the United States.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Lee in the Mountains and Other Poems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
1939
American Composition and Rhetoric ( textbook). New York: Scribner.
1942
Readings for Composition (textbook ). New York: Scribner. Revised
edition, 1957.
1946
The Tennessee Vol. 1, The Old River: Frontier to Secession. New
York: Rinehart. Rivers of America Series.
Honorary degree, Litt. D., Cumberland University
1948
Honorary degree, Litt. D., Washington and Lee University
The Tennessee Vol. 2, The New River: Civil War to TVA. New York: Rinehart. Rivers of America Series.
1952
"Singin Billy" - based on a poem by Davidson, music composed by Charles
Faulkner Bryan of George Peabody College for Teachers. Produced at Vanderbilt
Theater.
1953
(Author of introduction ) Stark Young, So Red the Rose, new edition,
Scribner.
1955
Twenty Lessons in Reading and Writing ( textbook ). New York:
Scribner.
1955 - 1959
Davidson Chairman of the Tennessee Federation for Constitutional Government.
May 1956
Fugitive Reunion at Vanderbilt.
1957
Davidson gives the first series of the Eugenia Dorothy Blount Lamar Memorial
Lectures at Mercer University in Georgia
(Published as Southern Writers in the Modern World ).
Still Rebels, Still Yankees and Other Essays. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
1958
Southern Writers in the Modern World ( Eugenia Lamar Memorial
Lectures ). Athens: University of Georgia Press.
1961
The Long Street: Poems. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
1963
The Spyglass: Views and Reviews, 1924 - 1930. Edited by John Tyree
Fain. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
1964
Davidson retires from Vanderbilt after 44 years.
1965
Honorary degree, L. H. D., Middlebury College.
1966
Poems, 1922 - 1961. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
(Editor and author of introduction) John Donald Wade, Selected Essays and Other Writings. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Spring 1968
Reunion of the Agrarians at the University of Dallas; Davidson unable to attend
because of failing health.
April 25, 1968
Donald Davidson dies in his home at the age of 74. Funeral service April 27,
1968 in Nashville.
1974
The Literary Correspondence of Donald Davidson and Allen Tate.
Edited by John Tyree Fain and Thomas Daniel Young. Athens: University of Georgia
Press.
1985
"Singin Billy: A Folk Opera." Text by Donald Davidson; music by Charles
Faulkner Bryan. Glendale, S. C.: Foundation for American Education.
1996
The Big Ballad Jamboree. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Overview | Biography | File
Listing: Boxes 1-30 | File Listing: Boxes
31-65
Appendix A: Poems by Davidson | Appendix
B: Literary Career
Appendix C: Fugitives & Agrarians | Appendix
D: Photographs
Special Collections | Heard Library | Vanderbilt University
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University
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