The Sewanee Review is a literary journal

Literary magazine

A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...

 established in 1892 and the oldest continuously published periodical of its kind in the United States. It incorporates original fiction and poetry, as well as essays, reviews, and literary criticism. It notably published five stories by Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...

, the dramatic version of Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men

All the King's Men

All the King's Men is a novel by Robert Penn Warren first published in 1946. Its title is drawn from the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty. In 1947 Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for All the King's Men....

, and Cormac McCarthy's first published work—a selection from his first novel, The Orchard Keeper

The Orchard Keeper

The Orchard Keeper is the first novel by the American novelist Cormac McCarthy.The novel is set in a small, isolated community in Tennessee, during the inter-war period...

. Other noted contributors include Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...

, W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

, Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...

, Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...

, Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

, Albert Camus

Albert Camus

Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...

, James Dickey

James Dickey

James Lafayette Dickey was an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1966.-Early years:...

, Andre Dubus II, T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

, William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

, Shelby Foote

Shelby Foote

Shelby Dade Foote, Jr. was an American historian and novelist who wrote The Civil War: A Narrative, a massive, three-volume history of the war. With geographic and cultural roots in the Mississippi Delta, Foote's life and writing paralleled the radical shift from the agrarian planter system of the...

, Robert Graves

Robert Graves

Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...

, John Haines

John Haines

John Haines was an American poet and educator who had served as the poet laureate of Alaska.John Meade Haines, who was born in Norfolk, Virginia, published nine collections of poetry. He was appointed the Poet Laureate of Alaska in 1969. A collection of critical essays about his poetry, The...

, Donald Hall

Donald Hall

Donald Hall is an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2006.-Personal life:...

, Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

, George V. Higgins

George V. Higgins

George V. Higgins was a United States author, lawyer, newspaper columnist, and college professor. He is best known for his bestselling crime novels. His full name was George Vincent Higgins, but his books were all published as by George V. Higgins. ACtually, his full name was George V...

, Madison Jones

Madison Jones

Madison Percy Jones is a novelist, born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1925. He has published almost a dozen novels, and is considered "one of the major figures of contemporary southern letters".-Biography:...

, X. J. Kennedy

X. J. Kennedy

X. J. Kennedy is a poet, translator, anthologist, editor, and writer of children's literature and student textbooks on English literature and poetry.-Beginnings and academic career:...

, Thomas Kinsella

Thomas Kinsella

Thomas Kinsella is an Irish poet, translator, editor, and publisher.-Early life and work:Kinsella was born in Lucan, County Dublin. He spent much of his childhood with relatives in rural Ireland. He was educated in the Irish language at the Model School, Inchicore and the O'Connell Christian...

, C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...

, F. O. Matthiessen

F. O. Matthiessen

Francis Otto Matthiessen was an educator, scholar and literary critic influential in the fields of American literature and American studies.-Scholarly work:...

, Howard Nemerov

Howard Nemerov

Howard Nemerov was an American poet. He was twice appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1963 to 1964, and again from 1988 to 1990. He received the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize for The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov...

, Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...

, Saint-John Perse

Saint-John Perse

Saint-John Perse was a French poet, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960 "for the soaring flight and evocative imagery of his poetry." He was also a major French diplomat from 1914 to 1940, after which he lived primarily in the USA until 1967.-Biography:Alexis Leger was...

, Katherine Anne Porter

Katherine Anne Porter

Katherine Anne Porter was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. Her 1962 novel Ship of Fools was the best-selling novel in America that year, but her short stories received much more critical acclaim...

, Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

, Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...

, Peter Taylor

Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor

For other people named Peter Taylor, see Peter Taylor.Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor was a U.S. author and writer.-Biography:...

, Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...

, Richard Tillinghast

Richard Tillinghast

-Life:Richard Tillinghast is a native of Memphis, Tennessee, a graduate of Sewanee and Harvard . He has taught at Harvard as a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer, at the University of California at Berkeley, in the college program at San Quentin Prison, at Sewanee, and the University of Michigan.Tillinghast...

, and Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty

Eudora Alice Welty was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published...

.

History

The Sewanee Review was established in 1892 by William Peterfield Trent

William Peterfield Trent

William Peterfield Trent, LL.D., D.C.L. was a professor of English literature at Columbia University, an American editor, and a historian.-Biography:...

, an English professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee

Sewanee, Tennessee

Sewanee is an unincorporated locality in Franklin County, Tennessee, United States, treated by the U.S. Census as a census-designated place . The population was 2,361 at the 2000 census...

. About the university's new quarterly, Trent remarked, "It will be devoted to reviews of leading books and to papers on such topics of general Theology, Philosophy, History, Political Science, and Literature as require further treatment than they receive in specialist publications." Trent edited the review until 1900. Upon his retirement, John Bell Hennemann edited the journal until 1909. For a year, the magazine was overseen by the faculty of the University. John McLaren McBryde, Jr. edited the review from 1910–1920, when George Herbert Clarke became editor.

Addition of poetry and fiction

Clarke was the first editor of the journal to publish poetry, and he published verse by Melville Crane, Donald Davidson

Donald Davidson (poet)

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

, Merrill Moore

Merrill Moore

-Biography:Moore attended Nashville's Vanderbilt University, where he was a member of the Fugitives, a group of then unknown poets who met to read and criticize each other's poems...

, John Crowe Ransom

John Crowe Ransom

John Crowe Ransom was an American poet, essayist, magazine editor, and professor.-Life:...

, Mark Van Doren

Mark Van Doren

Mark Van Doren was an American poet, writer and a critic, apart from being a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, and Beat Generation...

, and Margaret L. Woods

Margaret Louisa Woods

Margaret Louisa Woods was an English writer, known for novels and poetry. She was the daughter of the scholar George Granville Bradley and sister to fellow writer Mabel Birchenough...

. Up until this time, the journal had functioned largely as Trent intended; it published essays and book reviews on a wide variety of topics—literary criticism, philosophy, theology, natural sciences, and international events and politics. Clarke's editorship marked a shift toward a magazine devoted more wholly to literary criticism and to poetry. Clarke remained editor until 1926, when William Skinkle Knickerbocker took the helm. Knickerbocker first published fiction in the review in 1932, moving the magazine further away from Trent's original dictum to its current nature.

Upon Knickerbocker's retirement in 1942, Tudor Seymour Long became editor but was largely ineffectual. His brief tenure was dominated by Andrew 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...

, who served as a highly active managing editor until 1944, and 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:...

, who served as an advisory editor and de facto editor until 1944. Both men were urged to come to Sewanee and assist in the production of the magazine by the University's vice-chancellor, Alexander Guerry. It was during the early 1940s that the Review's place in American letters was revolutionized. It became a solid pillar in the New Criticism, which was sweeping American literary culture, placing it firmly alongside Cleanth Brooks

Cleanth Brooks

Cleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education...

's Southern Review and John Crowe Ransom's Kenyon Review. Lytle and Tate saw to the publication of such authors and critics as Randall Jarrell

Randall Jarrell

Randall Jarrell was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a role which now holds the title of US Poet Laureate.-Life:Jarrell was a native of Nashville, Tennessee...

, R. P. Blackmur

R. P. Blackmur

Richard Palmer Blackmur was an American literary critic and poet. He was born and grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. An autodidact, Blackmur worked in a bookshop after graduating from high school, and attended lectures at Harvard University without enrolling...

, Richard M. Weaver

Richard M. Weaver

Richard Malcolm Weaver, Jr was an American scholar who taught English at the University of Chicago. He is primarily known as a shaper of mid- 20th century conservatism and as an authority on modern rhetoric...

, and Brooks. When Tate officially became editor in 1944, he had the review redesigned by P. J. Conkwright, who crafted the distinctive blue cover and design still used today. Tate also published such literary giants as 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...

, Peter Taylor, Jean Stafford

Jean Stafford

Jean Stafford was an American short story writer and novelist, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford in 1970....

, Caroline Gordon

Caroline Gordon

Caroline Ferguson Gordon was a notable American novelist and literary critic who, while still in her thirties, was the recipient of two prestigious literary awards, a 1932 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 1934 O...

, Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke was an American poet, who published several volumes of poetry characterized by its rhythm, rhyming, and natural imagery. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book, The Waking.-Biography:...

, William Meredith

William Meredith

William Meredith may refer to:* Billy Meredith , Welsh international winger, oft described as "football's first superstar"* William Morris Meredith, Jr. , American poet and Pulitzer Prize laureate...

, Wallace Stevens, Reed Whittemore

Reed Whittemore

Edward Reed Whittemore, Jr. is an American poet, biographer, critic, literary journalist and college professor. He was appointed the sixteenth and later the twenty-eighth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1964, and in 1984.-Biography:Born in New Haven, Connecticut,...

, Karl Shapiro

Karl Shapiro

Karl Jay Shapiro was an American poet. He was appointed the fifth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1946.-Biography:...

, John Berryman

John Berryman

John Allyn Berryman was an American poet and scholar, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and was considered a key figure in the Confessional school of poetry...

, Robert Lowell

Robert Lowell

Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...

, Jacques Maritain

Jacques Maritain

Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised as a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive St. Thomas Aquinas for modern times and is a prominent drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...

, and Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan

Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...

.

Modern journal

Tate's editorship ended in 1946, and John E. Palmer became editor. He was followed by Monroe K. Spears in 1952 and then Andrew Lytle again in 1965. The current editor, George Core, succeeded Lytle in 1973. These four editors have continued the literary tradition begun in the 1940s, retaining elements of the New Criticism while devoting the lion's share of the magazine's pages to fiction, poetry, literary criticism, and book reviews.

The journal has, since the publication of "I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition" (1930), been heavily influenced by the Southern Agrarians. Allen Tate and Andrew Lytle have both served as editors, and Donald Davidson, John Crowe Ransom, and Robert Penn Warren have all contributed to the review. However, the review has never been a Southern magazine, even under Tate and Lytle; while many illustrious Southern authors have been featured in its pages (O'Connor, Faulkner, Welty, Porter, Dickey, etc.), the review has also published fiction and criticism by authors more associated with the New York Intellectuals, notably Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, and Lionel Trilling.

Core's editorship has also seen the emergence of themed issues. From 1974 to the present, the review has had issues devoted to themes as diverse as the literature of war, literature of the British Commonwealth, the autobiography, travel, war, Henry James, Irish letters, Jane Austen, humor, and the Renaissance. Core remarked in 1992, "The Sewanee Review . . . is a magazine based in the South, but it is not a southern magazine. It is not nearly so southern as the Virginia Quarterly Review, as the Southern Review or the Southern Literary Journal. Since I have been here, I have written a lot about the South myself, but I have published relatively little about the South. It is true that I have published a lot of southern writers, but their subjects often have not been southern at all."

The review gives the annual Aiken Taylor Award, consisting of $10,000 and begun in 1985 by the physician and poet K. P. A. Taylor in honor of his brother Conrad Aiken. Winners of the award, which has been given to poets otherwise unaffiliated with the review, have included Howard Nemerov, Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, W. S. Merwin, John Frederick Nims, Gwendolyn Brooks, George Starbuck, Wendell Berry, Maxine Kumin, Fred Chappell, Carolyn Kizer, X. J. Kennedy, George Garrett, Eleanor Ross Taylor, Frederick Morgan, Grace Schulman, Daniel Hoffman, Henry Taylor, B. H. Fairchild, Brendan Galvin, Anne Stevenson, John Haines, Donald Hall, and Louise Glück.

The journal is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October. Prior to its transfer to electronic processing at the Johns Hopkins University Press

Johns Hopkins University Press

The Johns Hopkins University Press is the publishing division of the Johns Hopkins University. It was founded in 1878 and holds the distinction of being the oldest continuously running university press in the United States. The Press publishes books, journals, and electronic databases...

, it was one of only two academic journals in the United States still printed by letterpress.

External links

• The Sewanee Review on the JHU Press website
• The Sewanee Review at Project MUSE
  Project MUSE
  Project MUSE is an online database of current and back issues of peer-reviewed humanities and social sciences journals. It was founded in 1993 by Todd Kelley and Susan Lewis and is a project of the Johns Hopkins University Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library. It had support from the Mellon...