Caroline Ferguson Gordon (October 6, 1895 – April 11, 1981) was an American novelist and

literary critic Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...

who, while still in her thirties, received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1932 and an

O. Henry Award The O. Henry Award is an annual American award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American short-story writer O. Henry. The ''PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories'' is an annual collection of the year's twenty best ...

in 1934.

Biography

Gordon was born and raised in

Todd County, Kentucky Todd County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2010 census, the population was 12,460. Its county seat is Elkton. The county is named for Colonel John Todd, who was killed at the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782 during t ...

at her family's plantation home, "

Woodstock Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held during August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, United States, southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, Woodstock. ...

". She was educated at her father's Clarksville Classical School for Boys in

Montgomery County, Tennessee Montgomery County is a county in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 220,069. The county seat (and only incorporated municipality) is Clarksville. The county was created in 1796. Montgomery Count ...

. In 1916, Gordon graduated from Bethany College and became a writer of society news for the ''Chattanooga Reporter'' newspaper in

Chattanooga, Tennessee Chattanooga ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. Located along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia, it also extends into Marion County on its western end. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, ...

.Powell, Mona
"Caroline Gordon"
, ''KYLIT'' — a site devoted to Kentucky writers. In the summer of 1924, Gordon returned home to Kentucky, when she met the poet

Allen Tate John Orley Allen Tate (November 19, 1899 – February 9, 1979), known professionally as Allen Tate, was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and poet laureate from 1943 to 1944. Life Early years Tate was born near Winchester, K ...

. She moved with Tate to New York City, where they first lived together in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

. They later shared a house with

Hart Crane Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American poet. Provoked and inspired by T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope. In his most ambitious work, '' The Brid ...

Patterson, New York Patterson is a town in Putnam County, New York, United States. The town is in the northeastern part of the county. Interstate 84 passes through the southwestern section of the town. The population was 11,541 at the 2020 census. The town is named ...

. Tate and Gordon wed in New York City on May 15, 1925, and their daughter Nancy was born in September 1925. In 1928, the family traveled to Europe, where they spent the next two years. After returning from Europe in 1930, Gordon and her family moved to BenFolly, a house they purchased in

Clarksville, Tennessee Clarksville is the county seat of Montgomery County, Tennessee, United States. It is the fifth-largest city in the state behind Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. The city had a population of 166,722 as of the 2020 United States ce ...

, with the assistance of Tate's brother Ben. Gordon and Tate entertained literary notables such as

Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the ''Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects i ...

, who camped on their lawn one summer. Other visitors included

F. Scott Fitzgerald Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularize ...

, Ernest Hemingway,

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of ...

, Flannery O'Connor, T. S. Eliot, Robert Penn Warren, and

Ford Madox Ford Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals ''The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review'' were instrumental in ...

. Ford served as a mentor to Gordon, counseling her on her literary work and prodding her into completing her first novel ''Penhally'', published in 1931. Gordon received the Guggenheim and the O. Henry during this early period. The O. Henry was a unique second-place prize awarded for her 1934 short story "Old Red", published in ''

Scribner's Magazine ''Scribner's Magazine'' was an American periodical published by the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons from January 1887 to May 1939. ''Scribner's Magazine'' was the second magazine out of the Scribner's firm, after the publication of ' ...

''. Gordon's early fiction was influenced by her association with the

Southern Agrarians The Southern Agrarians were twelve American Southerners who wrote an agrarian literary manifesto in 1930. They and their essay collection, ''I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition'', contributed to the Southern Renaissance, t ...

. Paul V. Murphy writes that she "exhibited a southern nostalgia as strong as any member of the group, including

Davidson Davidson may refer to: * Davidson (name) * Clan Davidson, a Highland Scottish clan * Davidson Media Group * Davidson Seamount, undersea mountain southwest of Monterey, California, USA * Tyler Davidson Fountain, monument in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA * ...

, the most unreconstructed of the Agrarians".Murphy, Paul V. (2001)
''The Rebuke of History'': Introduction
, University of North Carolina Press, p. 9. Between 1934 and 1972, Gordon published nine additional novels, five written during the late 1930s and

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Tate and Gordon moved to

Monteagle, Tennessee Monteagle is a town in Franklin, Grundy, and Marion counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee, in the Cumberland Plateau region of the southeastern part of the state. The population was 1,238 at the 2000 census – 804 of the town's 1,238 resi ...

, in 1942. At some point in the 1940s, they moved to

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...

, to a house they named BenBrackets. In 1945, Gordon and Tate divorced, but they remarried in 1946 and moved back to New York City. Gordon became a friend and mentor to novelists

Walker Percy Walker Percy, OSB (May 28, 1916 – May 10, 1990) was an American writer whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is noted for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans; his first, ''The Moviegoer'', won the Nat ...

and

Flannery O'Connor Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer who often ...

. Gordon also became a close friend of author Brainard Cheney and his wife, Frances (Fanny) Neel Cheney. Brainard Cheney considered Gordon to be his "literary mentor." According to Cheney, she taught him to write literature as compared to his previous occupation as a crime reporter. On November 24, 1947, Gordon converted to

Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

. Influenced by Gordon, the Cheneys also converted to Catholicism. Gordon introduced the couple to Flannery O'Connor, with whom they became close friends. Gordon divorced Tate in 1959 on grounds of desertion. Tate remarried four days later, but he and Gordon remained correspondents and friends until Tate's death in 1979. In her later years, Gordon moved to

San Cristóbal de las Casas San Cristóbal de las Casas (), also known by its native Tzotzil name, Jovel (), is a town and municipality located in the Central Highlands region of the Mexican state of Chiapas. It was the capital of the state until 1892, and is still consid ...

Chiapas Chiapas (; Tzotzil language, Tzotzil and Tzeltal language, Tzeltal: ''Chyapas'' ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Chiapas), is one of the states that make up the Political divisions of Mexico, ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

. On March 1, 1981, she suffered a stroke. Gordon died six weeks later, following surgery, at age 85.

Selected works

*''Penhally'' (1931) *''Aleck Maury, Sportsman'' (1934) *''None Shall Look Back'' (1937) *''The Garden of Adonis'' (1937) *''Green Centuries'' (1941) *''The Women on the Porch'' (1944) *''The Forest of the South'' (1945) *''The House of Fiction: An Anthology of the Short Story'' (with Allen Tate) (1950) *''The Strange Children'' (1951) *''The Malefactors'' (1956) *''A Good Soldier: A Key to the Novels of Ford Madox Ford'' (1957) *''How to Read a Novel'' (1957) *''Old Red and Other Stories'' (1963) *''The Glory of Hera'' (1972) *''The Collected Stories of Caroline Gordon'' (1981)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gordon, Caroline 1895 births 1981 deaths 20th-century American novelists American women novelists People from Clarksville, Tennessee People from Todd County, Kentucky Novelists from Kentucky Novelists from Tennessee Writers of American Southern literature Converts to Roman Catholicism Bethany College (West Virginia) alumni 20th-century American women writers Kentucky women writers Southern Agrarians