Agrarians

Definition 
The name for a group of Southern writers, many of them faculty members of Vanderbilt University, who in the 1920s argued for a return to an agricultural society in the South. They viewed industrialization as a destructive force, destined to undermine and distort traditional Southern values. The group published their views, along with poetry and criticism, in The Fugitive (1922–25) and later in The Southern Review (1935–42). Among the early group were Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, and Robert Penn Warren, three of the leading exponents of what was to become the New Criticism.