The Fugitives also known as The Fugitive Poets, is the name given to a group of poets and literary scholars at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who published a literary magazine from 1922 to 1925 called The Fugitive. The group, primarily driven by Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, and Allen Tate, formed a major school of twentieth century poetry in the United States. With it, a major period of modern Southern literature began. Their poetry was formal and featured traditional prosody and concrete imagery often from experiences of the rural south. The group has some overlap with two later movements: Southern Agrarians and New Criticism.
James Marshall Frank home at 3802 Whitland Avenue, Nashville, Tennessee, where the Fugitive Poets regularly met from 1920 to 1928 (photo: December, 2021)
Vanderbilt University is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1 million endowment in the hopes that his gift and the greater work of the university would help to heal the sectional wounds inflicted by the American Civil War. Vanderbilt is a founding member of the Southeastern Conference and has been the conference's only private school since 1966.
Drawing of Vanderbilt University's Main Campus from Appletons' Cyclopedia of American Biography (1889)
Main Campus, looking toward West End Avenue
Old Mechanical, now part of The Owen Graduate School of Management
Kirkland Hall at Vanderbilt University