William Pratt was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1927. He earned his B.A. degree in English at the University of Oklahoma. He received his Masters and Ph.D. degrees from Vanderbilt University with his thesis on William Faulkner and his dissertation on Henry James, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot. In 1957 Pratt joined the English Faculty at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He has lectured widely on Modern Poetry and American Literature.

This small collection (Hollinger Box 2 ½" ) includes letters to Pratt from seven of the original Fugitive poets and Andrew Lytle* dating from 1963 to as late as 1991.

There are a total of 50 letters written by 11 different people. Also included is the photocopy of the entire collection, 40 original envelopes, the 1964 contract for publication, the cover of The Fugitive Poets with a painting by Paul Davis, and the manuscript introduction to the first edition of The Fugitive Poets.

Ransom, Stevenson, and Lytle also included some poems with their letters to Pratt.

(* Lytle published in The Fugitive magazine, but was not one of the sixteen Fugitive poets.)