The one-hundredth anniversaries this spring of the births of Robert Lowell and Peter Taylor provide the chance to celebrate not only their achievements as writers—and they were two of the most influential artists of the twentieth century—but their central roles in a vibrant literary community began at Kenyon College and stretched out across the nation. In the late 1930s both transferred to Kenyon, Lowell from Harvard and Taylor from Vanderbilt, to study with the poet, critic, and mentor John Crowe Ransom. Ransom himself had been attracted to Kenyon from Vanderbilt with the express mission of founding what would become The Kenyon Review. Although he rarely published undergraduates, both Lowell and Taylor placed their work in these pages.
Perhaps more remarkable was the literary community Ransom created in a remote village in central Ohio. Along with Lowell and Taylor, Robie Macauley, Randall Jarrell, and others banded together as a cadre of aspiring writers, distinct within the larger student body. They were housed in a converted private home known as Douglass House, although it soon was simply referred to as the Writers’ House. Not only did they stimulate—and challenge—each other, but Mr. Ransom inspired them informally as well as in class. And he hosted his own distinguished friends regularly to Gambier, among them Alan Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and Andrew Lytle.
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