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Harriette
Simpson Arnow
1908-1986 |
Harriette Simpson Arnow was born July 7, 1908 in Wayne
County, Kentucky and grew up in neighboring Pulaski County in the
community of Burnside.
Arnow attended Berea College and the
University of Louisville and taught school for two years in Pulaski
County, Kentucky, before moving to Cincinnati.
In 1936 Mountain Path, her first novel
was published.
She married in 1939 and taught school in
Pulaski County again briefly, before moving, with her husband, to Detroit,
Michigan in 1944.
A popular Arnow novel, Hunter's Horn, was
published in 1949. This best-seller featuring well-developed characters, in the form of Kentucky farmers, brings the story to life.
Her best known novel, The Dollmaker, was
published in 1954 and received the National Book Award, one of many awards
and honors she received in her writing career. This novel's main
character, Gertie Nevells, represents the author's disdain for modern
industrialization and the loss of agrarian traditions. It portrays a
Kentucky family that moves north in search of employment and a better
life, only to struggle to hold onto their values and traditions.
Arnow's later works include
the social histories Seedtime on the Cumberland and Flowering of
the Cumberland.
Harriette Simpson Arnow died March 22,
1986 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
An historical marker on U.S. Highway 27,
in Burnside, Kentucky pays tribute to this Kentuckian and
her contribution to the literary world. |
The talents of Kentucky authors are unsurpassed anywhere
in the world and the voices heard in their writings are as diverse as our
magnificent landscapes.
From three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Robert Penn
Warren, (see at right), to the the best selling mystery writer Sue
Grafton; from the older American classics of Harriette Arnow, (see at
left), and Jesse Stuart, to the contemporary classics of Silas House and
Wendell Berry; from the humorous creations of Joe Creason and Irvin S.
Cobb, to the significant social studies of Harry Caudill and Frank X
Walker; from the light novels of Teresa Medeiros, to the serious works of
Pulitzer Prize winning playwrights Marsha Norman and John Patrick; from
the older popular fiction of John Fox, Jr., to the contemporary acclaimed
works of Bobbie Ann Mason and bell hooks; -- the contrasting voices of
Kentucky authors, spanning all literary genres, resonate messages of
timeless insight and wisdom.
The English Department at Eastern Kentucky University
offers short biographical
sketches of some Kentucky authors.
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Robert
Penn
Warren
1905-1989 |
Robert Penn Warren was born in Guthrie,
(Todd County), Kentucky in 1905. This distinguished poet, novelist,
essayist, critic, and scholar was appointed the first Poet Laureate of the
United States in 1985.
He attended Vanderbilt University where he
became a member of the poets' group called the Fugitives, which included
Donald Davidson, Merrill Moore, John Crowe Ranson, and Allen Tate, a
fellow Kentuckian and Warren's college roommate. (The Fugitives advocated
Southern rural traditions.)
Later, he, along with Cleanth Brooks,
another Kentuckian, co-founded the "Southern Review", a highly respected
literary journal.
After degrees from Vanderbilt University,
the University of California and Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes
Scholar, Warren taught at Vanderbilt, LSU and the University of Minnesota,
eventually settling into a professorship at Yale University in
Connecticut.
Winner of three Pulitzer Prizes, in 1947,
1958, and 1979; and to-date, the only person to win a prize for both
poetry and fiction; his first was the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1947,
for All the King's Men.
All the King's Men, a novel published in
1946, is a character study based loosely on Huey P. Long, a Louisiana
governor. Much of Warren's work focuses on human freedom and
dignity.
Warren would go on to win two Pulitizers
for poetry -- Promises: Poems, 1954-1956, (1957) which also won the
National Book Award; and Now and Then: Poems, 1978-1979, which earned him a third Pulitzer in 1979.
An historical marker on Third and Cherry
Streets in Guthrie, Kentucky notes the life of this eminent man of letters, a
distinguished Kentuckian who died in
1989. |
