Allen Tate (1899-1979), American poet, critic, biographer, and editor, was a founder and editor of the Fugitive. John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, and Cleanth Brooks were also part of the Fugitive group, and they and Tate formulated the New Critical poetic theories that arose out of the early work of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.

Tate's earliest publications included the interpretative biographies Stonewall Jackson (1928) and Jefferson Davis (1929). His first collection of verse, Poems, 1928-31, was published in 1932. While teaching English literature at several colleges, including Princeton, he held the chair of poetry at the Library of Congress from 1934 to 1944. He edited the Sewanee Review from 1944 to 1946. After 1951 he taught English literature at the University of Minnesota and lectured extensively at universities throughout the country.

Tate's creative work always echoed his preoccupations as a southerner. His penetrating and original novel, The Fathers (1938), which is experimental in form...