Before the Civil War, the South had a flourishing culture. In the dormant decades following the surrender at Appomattox, however, southerners devoted most of their energies to survival, neglecting such luxuries as literature. It was not until the 1920s that the South experienced a significant rebirth of literary activity.

Mark Royden Winchell’s book is divided into two sections. The first, entitled “The Nashville Renascence,” examines this resurgence of literature. This movement was partly an attempt to define or reinvent southern culture both socially and aesthetically, and the Fugitives and Agrarians were at the forefront. Essays in this section explore the political and social vision of the Agrarians; discuss prominent charter Agrarians John Gould Fletcher and Robert Penn Warren; and examine the influence the Fugitives and Agrarians have had on later southern literature, even into the twenty-first century.

Mark Royden Winchell is Professor of English and Director of the Great Works of Western Civilization program at Clemson University. He is the author of several books, including “Too Good to Be True”: The Life and Work of Leslie Fiedler and Where No Flag Flies: Donald Davidson and the Southern Resistance, both available from the University of Missouri Press.

“Chapter by chapter, and indeed sentence by sentence, these essays are splendidly written—mercifully free of contemporary critical jargon and easily accessible to the good and serious reader. There is the steady pilot light of high intelligence joining wit, good humor, and common sense to make the reading experience altogether worthwhile, a pleasant experience.”—George Garrett, author of Southern Excursions: Views on Southern Letters in My Time