Caroline Gordon facts for kids
Caroline Ferguson Gordon (born October 6, 1895 – died April 11, 1981) was an American writer and literary critic. She was known for her novels and short stories. Even when she was in her thirties, she won important awards like the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1932 and the O. Henry Award in 1934.
About Her Life
Caroline Gordon grew up in Todd County, Kentucky, on her family's plantation called "Woodstock". She went to her father's school, the Clarksville Classical School for Boys, in Montgomery County, Tennessee. In 1916, she graduated from Bethany College. After college, she worked as a writer for the Chattanooga Reporter newspaper in Chattanooga, Tennessee, covering local news.
In the summer of 1924, Caroline returned to Kentucky and met the poet Allen Tate. She moved with him to New York City. They lived in Greenwich Village and later shared a house with another writer, Hart Crane. Caroline and Allen got married in New York City on May 15, 1925. Their daughter, Nancy, was born in September of that same year. In 1928, the family traveled to Europe and stayed there for two years.
After returning from Europe in 1930, Caroline and her family moved to a house called BenFolly in Clarksville, Tennessee. They bought the house with help from Allen's brother. Many famous writers visited them there, including Robert Lowell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, T. S. Eliot, Robert Penn Warren, and Ford Madox Ford. Ford Madox Ford was a mentor to Caroline. He helped her with her writing and encouraged her to finish her first novel, Penhally, which was published in 1931.
During this early time, Caroline received the Guggenheim Fellowship and the O. Henry Award. The O. Henry Award was a special second-place prize for her 1934 short story "Old Red," which appeared in Scribner's Magazine. Caroline's early stories were influenced by a group called the Southern Agrarians. This group of writers often wrote about the history and culture of the American South.
In 1942, Caroline and Allen moved to Monteagle, Tennessee. Later in the 1940s, they moved to Princeton, New Jersey, to a house they named BenBrackets. Caroline and Allen divorced in 1945, but they remarried in 1946 and moved back to New York City. They divorced again in 1959. Even after their final divorce, Caroline and Allen remained friends and wrote letters to each other until Allen passed away in 1979.
Caroline Gordon became a friend and mentor to other novelists like Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor. She also became close friends with author Brainard Cheney and his wife. Brainard Cheney said Caroline taught him how to write literature, which was different from his earlier job as a crime reporter. On November 24, 1947, Caroline became a Catholic. She influenced the Cheneys, and they also became Catholic. Caroline introduced the Cheneys to Flannery O'Connor, and they all became good friends.
In her later years, Caroline Gordon moved to San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. On March 1, 1981, she had a stroke. Caroline passed away six weeks later, after surgery, at the age of 85.
Her Books and Stories
Caroline Gordon wrote many novels and collections of short stories.
Novels
- 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 Strange Children (1951)
- The Malefactors (1956)
- The Glory of Hera (1972)
Short Story Collections
- The Forest of the South (1945)
- Old Red and Other Stories (1963)
- The Collected Stories of Caroline Gordon (1981)
Other Works
- The House of Fiction: An Anthology of the Short Story (with Allen Tate) (1950)
- A Good Soldier: A Key to the Novels of Ford Madox Ford (1957)
- How to Read a Novel (1957)
