Louis D. Rubin, Jr.
Louis D. Rubin, Jr. (1923-2013) was born in Charleston, graduated from high school there, and spent two years at the College of Charleston before moving to Richmond, VA. After two years at the University of Richmond, he served three years in the U.S. Army during WWII. He then returned to Richmond and received his BA. From Johns Hopkins, he earned master’s and doctoral degrees while also gaining journalistic and teaching experience. By the end of his long life, he was internationally known as a scholar, critic, publisher, writer, and teacher.
A co-founder of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, Rubin enhanced the scope of Southern literature by founding Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 1982, a press dedicated to publishing Southern writers. As early as 1953, when he co-edited the influential anthology Southern Renaissance: The Literature of the Modern South, Rubin began to establish Southern Literature as a legitimate academic field, a professional goal he remained committed to throughout his career. After that publication of historical importance, he went on to publish 18 additional volumes of literary history and criticism. Rubin published three novels set in Charleston: The Golden Weather, Surfaces of a Diamond, and The Heat of the Sun.
Rubin’s novels portray significant cultural experiences, conveying the realities of dealing with racial othering and of living in the pre-Civil Rights Era as a Jewish American in the South. He left his job at a Richmond newspaper because he couldn’t support the paper’s anti-integration policy. He is, thus, both founder of the discipline of Southern Literature and an artist who resisted idealization of the Lost Cause in favor of shaping the reality of the region’s future.
A co-founder of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, Rubin enhanced the scope of Southern literature by founding Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 1982, a press dedicated to publishing Southern writers. As early as 1953, when he co-edited the influential anthology Southern Renaissance: The Literature of the Modern South, Rubin began to establish Southern Literature as a legitimate academic field, a professional goal he remained committed to throughout his career. After that publication of historical importance, he went on to publish 18 additional volumes of literary history and criticism. Rubin published three novels set in Charleston: The Golden Weather, Surfaces of a Diamond, and The Heat of the Sun.
Rubin’s novels portray significant cultural experiences, conveying the realities of dealing with racial othering and of living in the pre-Civil Rights Era as a Jewish American in the South. He left his job at a Richmond newspaper because he couldn’t support the paper’s anti-integration policy. He is, thus, both founder of the discipline of Southern Literature and an artist who resisted idealization of the Lost Cause in favor of shaping the reality of the region’s future.