Reviewing the South: Competing Canons in South Today and the Kenyon Review

Abstract

This chapter considers the editorial careers of Lillian Smith and John Crowe Ransom. Lillian Smith co-edited the little magazine South Today from 1936 to 1945 out of Clayton, Georgia, while John Crowe Ransom was the long-time editor of the Kenyon Review, a journal important in the proliferation of the New Criticism. This chapter uses these two figures, their periodicals, and their editorial decisions to show two competing criteria for a literary canon at the moment of World War II. Smith, whose magazine published many of her own essays on southern culture, was an anti-segregationist, and values literary works that established a progressive view on race relations. Smith’s ideal literary canon was a socially and politically engaged one. On the other hand, the optics of being apolitical by emphasizing aesthetics were the guiding principles for Ransom in his leadership of Kenyon Review, evidenced by the kinds of criticism and reviews published.