Fugitives: An Anthology of Verse

First edition. Edited by Donald Davidson. From the library of Paul Gaunt, signed by him and dated 1928 on the front endpaper with his bookplate on the front pastedown and later that of literary critic Oscar Cargill, signed by him on the front pastedown. In the words of Allen Tate "a Fugitive was quite simply a the Wanderer, or even the Wander Jew, the Outcast, the man who carries the secret wisdom around the world." Tate was one of the group of poets and academics who gathered at and in the vicinity of Nashville's Vanderbilt University. The poets and writers focused on carefully crafted poems with precise rhyme and metre which viewed their work as self-contained aesthetic wholes. In addition to Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Merrill Moore, Donald Davidson and Laura Riding were among those which formed the group identifying themselves as Fugitives. Supporting the traditions of the agrarian South in contrast to urban industrialization, several of the poets were later responsible for the formation of the literary collective identified as the Agrarians.