ABSTRACT
The best-known and the most analyzed of the twentieth-century Agrarians were the "Twelve Southerners" who authored I'll Take My Stand and the scholars who subsequently rallied behind their cause. This chapter focuses on two special issues regarding the Southern Agrarians. First, the tendency in analysis of this group and its members has been to move away from attention to their "agricultural" or "farming" side, and toward their literary intent. Second, the chapter will seek to delineate the degree to which the Southerners shared in New Agrarian themes. Of the Twelve, Andrew Lytle and Frank Owsley gave notable attention to the place of farm people and subsistence agriculture in the joint project. They understood that the agrarian argument must have two foundations: a showing that an "agrarian people" existed in the South in their time; and proof that a "family farm" folk existed in the antebellum past as well.
