John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974) was an American poet and critic whose book The New Criticism (1941) provided the name of the influential mid-twentieth-century school of criticism. He taught English at Vanderbilt University and at Kenyon College, where he founded and edited the literary magazine The Kenyon Review. He published numerous volumes of poetry, including Selected Poems (1945, 1969), which won a National Book Award.
Ashby Bland Crowder is Peace Professor Emeritus of English, American Literature, and the Humanities at Hendrix College. He is the author of the prize-winning Wakeful Anguish: A Literary Biography of William Humphrey and editor of Far from Home: Selected Letters of William Humphrey. With Jason David Hall, he edited Seamus Heaney: Poet, Critic, Translator.
