born April 30, 1888, Pulaski, Tenn., U.S.
died July 4, 1974, Gambier, Ohio
U.S. poet and critic.
Ransom attended and later taught at Vanderbilt University, where he became the leader of the Fugitives, a group of poets who shared a belief in the South and its agrarian traditions and published the influential journal The Fugitive (1922–25); he was among those Fugitives called Agrarian who contributed to I'll Take My Stand (1930). At Kenyon College, he founded and edited (1939–59) the Kenyon Review . His literary studies include The New Criticism (1941), which gave its name to an important critical movement (see New Criticism ), and he became recognized as a leading theorist of the post-World War I Southern literary renaissance. His Selected Poems (1945; rev. ed., 1969) won the National Book Award.