author
Edwin Mims
1872–1959
Best known as a longtime Vanderbilt English professor, he helped shape Southern literary culture while also writing biographies, criticism, and school anthologies. His work connected scholarship with teaching, and his influence reached well beyond the classroom.
1 Audiobook
Sidney Lanier
by Edwin Mims
About the author
Born in Arkansas in 1872, he studied at Vanderbilt University and later earned a doctorate at Cornell. He went on to become a respected teacher of English and American literature, with a career that included a long stretch at Vanderbilt.
For thirty years, he served as chair of Vanderbilt’s English Department, from 1912 to 1942. He is often remembered for teaching and encouraging students who became part of the Fugitives and the Southern Agrarians, giving him an important place in the story of twentieth-century Southern literature.
Alongside his academic work, he wrote and edited books, including a biography of Sidney Lanier, and was associated with the South Atlantic Quarterly. Sources also describe him as a firm opponent of lynching, suggesting a public life shaped not only by literary interests but by moral conviction as well.