Historical Survey of the Southern Review 1935-1942. Radical Conservatism

The Southern Review provided a vital examination of the cultural life of the period of the 1930's and 40s in American literary and cultural thought. In its pages appeared the early work of such writers as Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, Mary McCarthy, and other southern luminaries. It also served as a platform for the political, cultural, and social history of the time. Under the editorship of Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks, Jr., it became the center of the New Criticism and the various ideological conflicts associated with that movement. This study examines the unique place the journal held in shaping American literary thought. It examines original correspondence and other archival sources from Yale and Vanderbilt that included the letters of Warren and Brooks to the contributors.