Fellows in American Letters of the Library of Congress

The Fellows in American Letters of the Library of Congress are awarded by the Library of Congress.

In 1943, during his tenure as Librarian of Congress (1939–1944), poet Archibald MacLeish appointed poet Allen Tate as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1941–1986, the predecessor of the current Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress). Tate, in turn, created an advisory panel of "Fellows in American Letters," which, over the course of the next few years, would include most of the pillars of English modernist literature. Among them were T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Mark Van Doren, Van Wyck Brooks, Carl Sandburg, Willard Thorp, Ted Spencer, Conrad Aiken, and Karl Shapiro. Virtually all of the Fellows were friends of Tate, several of them his protégés.

In 1944, MacLeish stepped down as Librarian and Tate's term expired. MacLeish's successor, non-poet Luther H. Evans (1945–1953), relied on Tate to serve as an ongoing consultant and recommend candidates to fill the Poetry Consultant position. Among those Tate recommended to become Consultant were his old friend and colleague Robert Penn Warren (1944–1945), Louise Bogan (1945–1946), Shapiro (1946–1947), Robert Lowell (1947–1948), Léonie Adams (1948–1949), Elizabeth Bishop (1949–1950), and Aiken (1950–1952). Most Consultants accepted invitations to become Fellows when their terms expired.

...
Wikipedia