Robert Penn Warren Birthplace

Tuesday through Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.; Sunday, 2:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m.

This red brick "railroad bungalow" was built in the late 1800s. Sitting on the edge of Guthrie's historic district, it was a part of the thriving railroad community, which claimed to be "the crossroads of railroads in America."

A prime example of turn-of-the-century architecture, the rooms feature original fireplaces and hardwood floors. Some of the period antiques which decorate the home belonged to the Warrens. Visitors are encouraged to take special note of the displays of Robert Penn Warren's books, photographs, and other memorabilia.

The home is available to the public for reading and research; the complete collection of Warren's works are available. He published 10 novels, 16 volumes of poetry, many short stories, and plays. There is also a meeting room available for scheduling lectures, films, and discussion groups.

Robert Penn Warren lived in Guthrie, Kentucky, for 16 years. He grew up hearing stories about local townspeople and their lifestyles. These early impressions are evident in Warren's works.

Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)

The only writer to have won a Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry, Robert Penn Warren had a diverse literary career. He wrote fiction, poetry, drama, criticism, biography, and textbooks in the fields of literature, journalism, and sociology. He, along with Cleanth Brooks, founded the Southern Review, one of the most distinguished literary quarterlies in America.

Born on April 24, 1905, in Guthrie, Kentucky, Warren attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he studied under John Crowe Ransom, a noted English professor and poet. He also attended the University of California at Berkeley and Yale University before going as a Rhodes Scholar to Oxford, England. Warren married two times - first to Emma Brescia and then to Eleanor Clark. He had two children.

John Brown: The Making of a Martyr (1929) was Warren's first published book. This unorthodox biography examines the social and political events that led to the development of the South. Warren's first novel, Night Rider (1939), discussed the same themes as the John Brown biography of the ambiguity of truth, the corruption of the idealist, and the difficulty of self-knowledge. Literary scholars have acknowledged these reoccurring themes in most of Warren's writing.

Warren's greatest talent is said to have been his feel for narrative. His novels--All the King's Men (1946), World Enough and Time (1950), and Brother to Dragons (1953)--are examples of Warren's special handling of legends, ballads, and historical events. All the King's Men, a fictionalization of the career of Huey P. Long, earned Warren his first Pulitzer Prize.

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