Close Connections: Caroline Gordon and the Southern Renaissance

NY 1987 1st Putnam. Gordon and Allen Tate were at the vortex of a circle of writers" which included Hart Crane, Robert Lowell, Jean Stafford. 8vo., 416pp., photo illus., index. Fine in Fine DJ.

This unassuming, well-written biography of that often neglected "Agrarian," Allen Tate's wife, yields unexpected dividends. Not only a distinguished fiction-writer and critic in her own right, on the basis of this engrossing portrait, she was a genuinely interesting woman. For some 30 years she was almost the nurturing center of that loose group of Southern writers and Catholic converts who figure largely in our literary history. A workaholic, superbly competent, and generous of her time and energy to a fault, she seems to have embraced wholly the ideal of submissive womanhood and mercilessly chastised herself for her failures to live up to it. Waldron has made extensive use of her letters and used them tellingly to suggest the passionate whiplash of her flawed but admirable personality. Earl Rovit, English Dept., City Coll.,
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