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 (1922-1925) and contributed the introduction “A Statement of Principles” and the initial essay “Reconstructed but Unregenerate” for I’ll Take My Stand which was published in 1930. In 1937 Ransom accepted a position at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio as Carnegie Professor of Poetry. While at Kenyon he 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), Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1927) 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. There are a number of books written about him and his poetry including Thomas Daniel Young’s biography Gentleman in a Dustcoat (1976) He died in 1974 at the age of eighty six.