The Southern Agrarians were twelve people from the American South who wrote a book about farming and rural life in 1930. Their book, I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, helped bring new energy to Southern writing during the 1920s and 1930s. They were connected to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. John Crowe Ransom was not an official leader but was highly respected, while Robert Penn Warren became the most well-known member. Some of the group’s members were also part of another group called The Fugitives.

Members

The twelve authors of the Southern Agrarians manifesto, I'll Take My Stand, included:

• Donald Davidson, a poet, essayist, reviewer, and historian
• John Gould Fletcher, a poet and historian
• Henry Blue Kline
• Lyle H. Lanier
• Andrew Nelson Lytle, a poet, novelist, and essayist
• Herman Clarence Nixon
• Frank Lawrence Owsley, a historian
• John Crowe Ransom, a poet, professor, and essayist
• Allen Tate, a poet
• John Donald Wade, a biographer and essayist
• Robert Penn Warren, a poet, novelist, essayist, and critic who later became the first poet laureate of the United States
• Stark Young, a novelist, drama and literary critic, and playwright

Other writers connected to the Agrarians include Richard M. Weaver, Caroline Gordon, Brainard Cheney, and Herbert Agar.

Background and general ideas

The Agrarians came from a group of thinkers called the "Fugitives" or "Fugitive Poets." Many Southern Agrarians and Fugitive poets were part of Vanderbilt University, either as students or teachers. Davidson, Lytle, Ransom, Tate, and Warren studied at the university. Later, Davidson, Ransom, Wade, and Owsley became teachers there. These individuals were also known as the "Twelve Southerners," the "Vanderbilt Agrarians," the "Nashville Agrarians," the "Tennessee Agrarians," and the "Fugitive Agrarians."

They were upset by H. L. Mencken’s criticism of Southern culture, which included values like agrarianism, conservatism, and religiosity. They wanted to address the growing influence of modern life, cities, and industry on American, especially Southern, traditions. The Agrarians were inspired by the medieval ideas of Victorian writers Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, and William Morris, as well as French political ideas from Joseph de Maistre. These ideas reached them through writers like T. E. Hulme, T. S. Eliot, and Charles Maurras. John Crowe Ransom was the informal leader of the Fugitives and Agrarians. However, in a 1945 essay, he said he no longer believed in returning to an Agrarian way of life, calling it a "fantasy."

The book I’ll Take My Stand, published in 1930, was criticized for being a nostalgic and romantic defense of the Old South and the Confederacy. It avoided discussing slavery and criticized "progress." The book sold about 2,000 copies by 1940 and was reprinted multiple times. A 2006 edition was released by Louisiana State University Press to celebrate the book’s 75th anniversary.

Most Agrarians wrote essays for a second collection called Who Owns America? (1936), which also included writings from English distributists. They contributed many articles to The American Review, edited by Seward Collins. Some Agrarians wrote as many as 70 articles, with Donald Davidson writing 21. Scholar Louis Menand noted that their work helped spread the idea of New Criticism to the United States from Britain.

Collins later supported fascism, which caused some Agrarians to regret their association with him. Agrarian Allen Tate wrote an article against fascism for The New Republic in 1936. Despite this, Tate remained in contact with Collins and continued writing for The American Review until it ended in 1937.

Chapel Hill Sociologists

In the 1930s, the Agrarians faced challenges from a group of social scientists who supported modernization. These scientists, known as the "Chapel Hill Sociologists" and based at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, were led by Howard W. Odum. They debated issues such as urban development, social progress, and how to define the South. The sociologists published works like Rupert Vance's The Human Geography of the South (1932) and Howard W. Odum's Southern Regions of the United States (1936), as well as many articles in the journal Social Forces. They believed that problems in the South came from traditional ways of life and that these issues could be solved through modernization, which was the opposite of the Agrarians' views.

Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren became the most successful member of the Agrarians. He was a well-known American poet and novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book All the King's Men in 1946.

At a meeting of the Fugitive Poets in 1956, Warren admitted that for about ten years—starting just before World War II and continuing for some time afterward—he had ignored Agrarianism because he believed it was not relevant to the major social and political changes happening around the world. However, he later thought that his earlier Agrarian ideas were actually connected to the important problems of his time. In the modern world, individuals had become less important, losing a sense of responsibility, history, or connection to their communities. Paul V. Murphy wrote that Warren saw the Agrarian vision of a better pre-war South as a possible way to inspire spiritual renewal. This past, remembered not as a mythical "golden age" but as a carefully studied historical period, could challenge the problems of the present.

Warren’s focus on democracy, regional identity, personal freedom, and individual responsibility led him to support the civil rights movement. In his nonfiction books Segregation (1956) and Who Speaks for the Negro? (1965), he described the movement as a fight for identity and individuality. Hugh Ruppersburg and others noted that Warren’s support for civil rights was linked to Agrarianism, though by the 1950s, his understanding of Agrarianism had changed from what it was in I'll Take My Stand. As Warren’s views on politics and society developed, his ideas about Agrarianism changed too. He began to support more progressive ideas, racial equality, and was a close friend of the famous African-American writer Ralph Ellison. While Donald Davidson worked to keep segregation in place, Warren opposed it. Paul V. Murphy wrote, "Loyalty to the southern past and the unclear lessons of Agrarianism led both men to take very different paths."

Legacy

In 1979, Louis D. Rubin Jr. wrote about the Agrarians. In 1981, the University of Georgia Press released a book titled Why the South Will Survive: Fifteen Southerners Look at Their Region a Half Century after I'll Take My Stand. The book included writings from Donald L. Anderson (1932–2004), M. E. Bradford, Cleanth Brooks, Thomas Fleming, Samuel T. Francis, George Garrett, William C. Havard, Hamilton C. Horton Jr., Thomas H. Landess, Marion Montgomery, John Shelton Reed, George C. Rogers Jr., David B. Sentelle, and Clyde N. Wilson. Lytle wrote an afterword for the book.

In recent years, some American traditional conservatives, such as Allan C. Carlson, Joseph Scotchie, and Eugene Genovese, have praised the Agrarian ideas because they believe modern societies that are highly urbanized and industrialized have problems. Today, the Southern Agrarians are often honored in publications like The Southern Partisan. Some of their social, economic, and political ideas have been improved and made more relevant by writers such as Allan C. Carlson and Wendell Berry. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has published books that examine the Agrarians' ideas further.