Monroe K. Spears

Monroe K. Spears was born in Darlington, SC in 1916 and graduated in 1937 from the University of South Carolina. He achieved an international reputation as a literary critic and editor of The Sewanee Review (1952-1961). He wrote or edited more than eight volumes, including Space Against Time in Modern American Poetry (1972); American Ambitions (1987); and a book of poetry, The Levitator and Other Poems (1975). Countries of the Mind: Literary Explorations was published in 1992. A 46-year career as an English professor took him to the University of Wisconsin, Vanderbilt, the University of the South, and Rice, from which he retired in 1986 as professor emeritus. Spears died on May 23, 1998 in Winchester, Tennessee.