(1888-1974)

   John Crowe Ransom was a renowned American poet and literary critic. He was born in 1888 in Pulaski, Tennessee, to James and Ella (Crowe) Ransom. His father was a Methodist minister. John entered Vanderbilt University in Nashville in 1903 at the age of fifteen. After graduation in 1909 he studied classics as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford until 1913. After serving in World War I, he married Robb Reavill and became a teacher of English at Vanderbilt University, where he remained until 1937. While at Vanderbilt Ransom became a leader of a group of poets who shared a belief in the South and its regional traditions.

(1917-1977)

   Robert Trail Spence Lowell, Jr. was an important poet with a Knox County, Ohio, connection. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1917 where his father, Robert Trail Spence, Sr. was a naval officer. Robert, Jr. spent most of his youth in Boston, except for periods of time in Washington and Philadelphia when the family was following Robert, Sr., in his naval assignments. Robert attended St. Mark’s School in Boston and studied for two years at Harvard University. He transferred to Kenyon College in order to study under John Crowe Ransom. He graduated from Kenyon in 1940 with a B.A. in classical studies. That same year he married Jean Stafford.