“The critic is surely himself a literary creator, and his work starts…” — John Crowe Ransom

“The critic is surely himself a literary creator, and his work starts with a spontaneous surge of piety, and is inducted by the contagion of art into a composition of his own.”

He gives literary criticism a creative dignity, describing the critic as an artist responding to art. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

John Crowe Ransom

About John Crowe Ransom

30 April 1888–3 July 1974

John Crowe Ransom stood at the crossroads of American poetry and criticism in the twentieth century, a figure whose influence extended far beyond the elegant verses he composed. Born on April 30, 1888, in Pulaski, Tennessee, he would become the architect of a critical revolution, the mentor to some of America's finest…

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