Finding-Aid for the Allen Tate Papers (WTU00338)

Table of Contents

Descriptive Summary

Biographical Note

Scope and Contents Note

Restrictions

Administrative Information

Collection Outline

Papers 1963-1964

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Biographical Note

Allen Tate was born in Winchester, Clarke County, Kentucky, in 1899. He attended Vanderbilt University and graduated magna cum laude in 1922. He married the novelist Caroline Gordon in 1924. Tate was a founding editor of The Fugitive, a magazine of verse published out of Nashville, Tennessee, from 1922 to 1925. The magazine was named for the Fugitives, a group of Southern poets which included Tate and several of his colleagues from Vanderbilt, including John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson, and Merrill Moore. The Fugitives were practitioners and defenders of formal technique in poetry and were preoccupied with the defending the traditional values of the agrarian South against the effects of urban industrialization. Tate published his first book of poems, Mr. Pope and Other Poems, in 1928. His early work reflects the influence by Baudelaire, Corbière, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot. Tate taught at several colleges and universities and was editor of The Sewanee Review from 1944 to 1947. He had a great influence not only as a critic but as a mentor to such younger poets as Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and Randall Jarrell. From 1951 until his retirement he was a professor of English at the University of Minnesota. His poetry includes The Mediterranean and Other Poems (1936); The Winter Sea (1944); Two Conceits for the Eye to Sing, If Possible (1950); and The Swimmers and Other Selected Poems (1970). Prose volumes include two biographies on Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis. His autobiographical texts were collected for Memories and Opinions, 1926-1974, published in 1975.

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Scope and Contents Note

Allen Tate to Henry Wenning 1963: December 24. 1 item (1 p.). Encloses payment for copy of Chills and Fever [collection of poems] by John Crowe Ransom (Knopf, 1924) and explains origin of tipped-in title page of White Buildings [collection of poems] by Hart Crane (Boni & Liveright, 1926) for which he had provided a Foreword. The first issue had misspelled Tate’s name on the title page: Allan. A corrected title page was tipped-in all subsequent copies. Comments upon scarcity of few first issue copies and relates that he has given his own copy to Peggy Baird, first wife of Malcolm Cowley, for her Hart Crane Collection, purchased by the University of Texas. 1964: January 8. 1 item (2 pp.): TL [carbon]. Reports that his copy of Chills and Fever was no longer available. Thanks him for information concerning first issue of White Buildings and comments further upon extreme scarcity of book without corrected title page. Comments upon state of George Marion O’Donnell’s correspondence which is in hands of an heir. Allen Tate to Henry Wenning 1964: June 6. 1 item (1 p.). Requests copy of Chills and Fever. Relates that his own copy of Mr. Pope [collection of poems] (Minton, Balch & Company, 1928) has a tipped in sheet for Ode. Henry Wenning to Allen Tate 1964: June 9. 1 item (1 p.) TL [carbon]. Thanks him for purchasing copy of Chills and Fever and thanks him for the information sent on Mr. Pope.

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Restrictions

Collection is open to research.

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Administrative Information

Source

Gift of Henry Wenning.

Processed by Washington University Department Special Collections Staff.

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Box and Folder Listing

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