John Gould Fletcher, writer and critic, Pulitzer Prize winner, was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1886. After leaving Harvard, he traveled widely in the United States, Europe, and England, where he lived for some twenty years. He was acquainted with many writers in England, Europe, and the United States. In England he was associated with the Imagist writers and the development of Modernism, and in the United State with the Southern writers known as the "Fugitives." Fletcher returned to the United States in 1933, and with his wife, the writer Charlie May Simon, built "Johnswood," on the bluffs above the Arkansas River outside of Little Rock. He actively supported the arts and was deeply concerned with the cultural heritage and development of the South, particularly Arkansas. Fletcher received the Pulitzer Prize in 1938 for his Selected Poems, drawn from his lifelong output. He published a history of his native state Arkansas in 1947. John Gould Fletcher died in Little Rock in 1950.

(Biographical note copied from the finding aid for MS F63, the John Gould Fletcher Papers)