Stark Young (1881-1963) was a drama critic, editor, translator, painter, playwright, and novelist.

Stark Young was born in Como, Mississippi, on October 11, 1881, the son of a physician in a family which traced its ancestry in the United States back to 1795. Young received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Mississippi in 1901 and his Master's degree in English from Columbia University in 1902. For the next six months he lived in a hut in the North Carolina mountains studying Dante and other classic poets and writing poems. In 1903 he accepted a position teaching at a military school in Water Valley, Mississippi. In 1905 he accepted a position in the English Department at the University of Mississippi.

Young published his first volume of poetry, The Blind Man at the Window, and his verse play Guenevere in 1906. A year later he left the University of Mississippi to accept a position at the University...