Sunset Cottage (1856-2025)
Gambier, Knox County, Ohio
Marker Inscription
hHstoric home of the Kenyon Department of English and The Kenyon Review.
The Story
In the college town of Gambier, Ohio, this 1856 building on the Kenyon College campus became a landmark of American letters as the longtime home of the college's English Department and The Kenyon Review. Founded in 1939 by the poet and critic John Crowe Ransom, the Review grew into one of the most influential literary quarterlies in the United States and a flagship of the mid-century movement known as the New Criticism. For decades its editors and faculty worked from these rooms, reading manuscripts and shaping the careers of poets, novelists, and critics whose work reached a national audience.
Why it matters
The Kenyon Review helped set the standard for serious literary criticism and creative writing in twentieth-century America, making this modest campus building a quiet but genuine cornerstone of the nation's cultural and intellectual life.
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Related people
- · John Crowe Ransom
Related events
- · Founding of The Kenyon Review (1939)
Themes & tags
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