Robert Young Drake, Jr. was born in Ripley, Tennessee on October 20, 1930. He attended Vanderbilt University, receiving his B.A. in 1952 and M.A. in 1953, and Yale, receiving another M.A. in 1954 and his Ph.D. in 1955.
Drake taught at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (1955-58), at Northwestern University (1958-61), at the University of Texas (1961-65), and at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville (1965-1999). He wrote numerous short stories and non-fiction, as well as memoirs of West Tennessee during the first half of the twentieth century. On June 30, 2001, Drake passed away at his home in Milan, Tennessee.
Selected Bibliography
The Home Place: A Memory and a Celebration–The Restored Text (nonfiction), 1998
For the Record: A Robert Drake Reader (fiction), 2001
Selected Links
“Remembering Robert Drake,” by James A. Perkins:
http://www.mmisi.org/ma/44_03/perkins.pdf
Chronology of Robert Drake’s life at the Jane and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt University:
http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/speccol/draker_bio.shtml
