Madison Percy Jones is a novelist, born in Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...

 in 1925. He has published almost a dozen novels, and is considered "one of the major figures of contemporary southern letters".

Biography

Madison Jones was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on November 21, 1995. She was the daughter of Christy and Alexandra, and spent her early years living in suburban georgia. When Madison was 14, her father purchased Sycamore Farm in hill country 25 miles north of the city. At 17, Jones dropped out of Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...

 to become a farmer, moving to Sycamore Farm where he lived for a year and a half. He became associated with the Southern Agrarians

Southern Agrarians

The Southern Agrarians were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who joined together to write a pro-Southern agrarian manifesto, a...

, which proved a great influence on his later work.

After graduating from Vanderbilt in 1949 (where he studied under Donald Davidson

Donald Davidson (poet)

Donald Grady Davidson was a U.S. poet, essayist, social and literary critic, and author...

) and getting a master's degree at the University of Florida

University of Florida

The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...

 (where he was a student of Andrew Nelson Lytle

Andrew Nelson Lytle

Andrew Nelson Lytle was an American novelist, dramatist, essayist and professor of literature. He was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and early in his life planned to be an actor and playwright...

), he taught English at the University of Tennessee

University of Tennessee

The University of Tennessee is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville, Tennessee, United States...

 before accepting a creative writing position at Auburn University

Auburn University

Auburn University is a public university located in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 25,000 students and 1,200 faculty members, it is one of the largest universities in the state. Auburn was chartered on February 7, 1856, as the East Alabama Male College, a private liberal arts...

 in 1956. He retired from Auburn in 1987, having been a longtime writer in residence.

Literary work

His first novel, The Innocent (1957), was favorably reviewed by Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...

, who praised him for his "basic seriousness of intention, and his deep, natural sense of fiction." Success came slowly; his 1967 novel An Exile (originally published in The Sewanee Review), for instance, was shopped around twice by Pat Kavanagh

Pat Kavanagh (agent)

Patricia Olive Kavanagh was a British literary agent.Kavanagh was born in 1940 in Durban, South Africa, where her father was a journalist. Her half-sister, Julie Kavanagh, is a ballet critic. Her half-brother, Michael O'Brien is a geologist for AngloGold Ashanti in Johannesburg...

 before André Deutsch

André Deutsch

André Deutsch was a British publisher.After having learned the business of publishing working for Francis Aldor with whom he was interned in the Isle of Man during the Second World War and who had introduced him to the industry, André Deutsch left Aldor's employment after a few months to continue...

, who had turned it down the first time, picked it up.

Allen Tate

Allen Tate

John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Life:...

 referred to him as a southern Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

; other critics have also noted his "traditional social values and stern Puritanism." Though he is seen as a central figure in American literature, he is not well known; the first monograph on him wasn't published until 2005. He is regarded as having an "essentially religious outlook"; his later work is much darker than his earlier work, "primarily because he has seen the South losing the 'redemptive memory' which gives life meaning and substance."

He received The Sewanee Review Fellowship for 1955/56, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in 1968, and the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973. The historical novel Nashville 1864, set during the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, received the inaugural Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction

Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction

The Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction is an annual literary award awarded to the writer of a work of fiction related to the American Civil War. The award was started by Jeffrey Shaara and named for his father, the writer of historical fiction Michael Shaara.The $5000 was...

in 1998.

External links

• Madison Jones entry in the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture