Taking the Town

Taking the Town: Collegiate and Community Culture in the Bluegrass, 1880--1917 explores culture and intellectual life in Lexington, Kentucky, at the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing from local newspapers and from the work of historians and other writers, Kolan Thomas Morelock reveals Lexington to be a city of contradictions: known as a cultural "Athens of the West," it also struggled with the poverty, ignorance, and bigotry characteristic of southern communities after the Civil War. Taking the Town examines the contributions to local culture made by the literary and dramatic clubs prevalent on the city's college campuses. It is a vital account of turn-of-the-century southern intellectual life thriving within an environment of considerable turmoil, violence, and change.