Edwin Mims

Edwin Mims
Born	1872
Died	1959
Resting place	Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery
Nationality	American
Education	Vanderbilt University
Occupation	University professor

Edwin Mims (1872-1959) was an American university Professor of English literature. He served as the Chair of the English Department at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee for thirty years from 1912 to 1942, and he taught many members of the Fugitives and the Southern Agrarians, two literary movements in the South. He was a staunch opponent of lynching, and a practicing Methodist.

Edwin Mims was born in 1872. He graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1892 and a Master of Arts degree in 1893. He was also the editor of The Vanderbilt Hustler, the main campus newspaper.

He served as a Professor of English at Duke University (then known as Trinity College) in Durham, North Carolina and later at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

The second Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, James Hampton Kirkland (1859–1939), then convinced him to return to his alma mater to teach. He went on to serve as the Chair of the English Department at Vanderbilt University from 1912 to 1942. One of his requirements was to ask his students to learn a thousand verses if poetry by heart. He also asked students to write an autobiographical essay each year. He wrote a history of Vanderbilt University as well as pf Chancellor Kirkland. Some of his students included Donald Davidson (1893-1968), Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989), Cleanth Brooks (1906-1994), Andrew Nelson Lytle (1902-1995), Allen Tate (1899–1979), Merrill Moore (1903-1957) and Jesse Stuart (1907-1984). Stuart's Beyond Dark Hills, was the direct result of one of Mims's assignments (writing an autobiographical essay); it was published in 1938. During his tenure as Chair, he wrote to Chancellor Kirkland to discourage him to match the offer that Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio made to his colleague John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974), so that Ransom would leave for Ohio instead. However, Allen Tate tried to expose his hypocrisy as Mims assured Ransom he would be welcome to stay in his department at Vanderbilt. Another colleague, Lyle H. Lanier (1903–1988), agreed that this demonstrated Mims's hypocrisy.

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