The Fugitives and the Agrarians

HERE has existed for a long time a degree of confusion among historians of American literature about the intentions and meanings of the separate but related groups of writers known as the (named after their little magazine The Fugitive, 1922-1925) and the Southern Agrarians (authors of the symposium I'll TaIe My Stand, 1930), both of which had a nucleus at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, during a time of social and cultural ferment in the nation. Wherever one looks in reference works, literary histories, and anthologies of the past several decades, an error is likely to be found. This appears to be true even in some of the most dependable and trustworthy sources. For example, The Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature identifies the as A group of southern Agrarian writers, critics, and poets,1 while Richard Poirier and William L. Vance reverse the error in their anthology, American Literature, by identifying the contributors to I'll Take My Stand as a group sometimes referred to as the 'Fugitives,' from the magazine The Fugitive . . . to which this group frequently contributed.2 They then go on actually to list the Fugitives as the authors of an excerpt from the Agrarian statement of principles in I'll Take My Stand. James D. Hart in The Oxford Companion to American Literature, even in its fifth revision, describes The Fugitive as a magazine that contained poetry and criticism championing regionalism, and under the entry for John Crowe Ransom, we

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