Allen Tate (1899–1979)
Author of The Fathers
About the Author
Tate---poet, essayist, novelist, biographer, and critic---began his literary career in 1922 as an editor of The Fugitive The Fugitive, a magazine of southern poets and critics, many of them associated with Vanderbilt University. As editor and in his own works, Tate advocated regionalism, explaining show more that "only a return to the provinces, to the small self-contained centers of life, will put the all-destroying abstraction America safely to rest." In 1943 he held the chair of poetry in the Library of Congress. From 1944 to 1947, he edited another important journal of literary criticism, Sewanee Review. Tate claimed to be "on record as a casual essayist of whom little consistency can be expected." Nevertheless, as editor of The Fugitive and the Sewanee Review, he had a dramatic impact on the availability and evaluation of poets and prose writers. He made significant contributions to modern poetry and modern literary criticism. His poetry, usually identified as "modern metaphysical," he described as "gradually circling round a subject, threatening it and using the ultimate violence upon it." As a critic, he is generally placed with the "new" or formalist critics, though he adds a strong strain of religious humanism, reflected by his conversion in 1950 to Roman Catholicism. Tate was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1949 and won the Bollingen Prize in poetry in 1956. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Allen Tate as a young man
Courtesy of the NYPL Digital Gallery
(image use requires permission from the New York Public Library)
Courtesy of the NYPL Digital Gallery
(image use requires permission from the New York Public Library)
Works by Allen Tate
The republic of letters in America : the correspondence of John Peale Bishop & Allen Tate (1981) 4 copies
Poems, 1920-1945, a selection 3 copies
Fugitives, an anthology of verse — Editor — 2 copies
Poems, 1928-1931 1 copy
Sonnets at Christmas 1 copy
Associated Works
American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume Two: E. E. Cummings to May Swenson (2000) — Contributor — 407 copies
I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (Library of Southern Civilization) (1930) — Contributor — 323 copies
Aspects of Alice: Lewis Carroll's Dream Child as Seen Through the Critics' Looking-glasses, 1865-1971 (1971) — Contributor — 117 copies
The Fugitive Poets: Modern Southern Poetry (Southern Classics Series) (1991) — Contributor — 112 copies
Published and Perished: Memoria, Eulogies, and Remembrances of American Writers (2002) — Contributor — 37 copies
In the Deepest Aquarium; Poems. With an Introd. By Allen Tate (1959) — Introduction, some editions — 3 copies
The Reviewer, Volume IV, Numbers 1-5 (October 1923-October 1924) — Contributor — 1 copy
The Reviewer, Volume III, Numbers 1-12 (April 1922-July 1923) — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Tate, John Orley Allen
- Birthdate
- 1899-11-19
- Date of death
- 1979-02-09
- Burial location
- University Cemetery, Sewanee, Tennessee, USA
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Winchester, Kentucky, USA
- Place of death
- Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Places of residence
- Gambier, Ohio, USA
New York, New York, USA
Patterson, New York, USA
Sewanee, Tennessee, USA
Paris, France - Education
- Vanderbilt University (BA|1922)
Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (violin) - Occupations
- poet
professor
literary critic
novelist
editor
biographer (show all 10)
translator
essayist
playwright
janitor - Relationships
- Gordon, Caroline (wife)
Gardner, Isabella (wife)
Brooks, Cleanth (friend)
Pound, Ezra (friend)
Crane, Hart (friend)
Lytle, Andrew (friend) (show all 19)
Cowley, Malcolm (friend)
Brown, Slater (friend)
Taylor, Peter Hillsman (student)
Lowell, Robert (student)
Jarrell, Randall (student)
Blackmur, R. P. (student)
Berryman, John (student)
Ransom, John Crowe (teacher)
Davidson, Donald (teacher)
Curry, Walter Clyde (teacher)
Prunty, Wyatt (student)
Mims, Edwin (teacher)
Zabel, Morton Dauwen (friend) - Organizations
- The Fugitives
The Agrarians
The Sewanee Review (editor)
Kenyon College (professor)
The American Review (editor)
Princeton University (founder of creative writing program) (show all 9)
New York University, New York, New York, USA (lecturer)
University of Minnesota (professor)
Indiana School of Letters (senior fellow) - Awards and honors
- Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1943-1944)
American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award ( [1948])
National Institute of Arts and Letters award (1948)
Bollingen Prize (1957)
Brandeis University Medal (1961)
Dante Society Gold Medal (1962) (show all 13)
Academy of American Poets award (1963)
Oscar Williams award (1976)
Mark Rothko award (1976)
Ingram Merrill award (1976)
National Medal for Literature (1976)
Guggenheim fellowships ( [1928] ∙ [1929])
Phi Beta Kappa
Members
Reviews
Lists
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 50
- Also by
- 34
- Members
- 812
- Popularity
- #31,427
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 4
- ISBNs
- 67
- Languages
- 1