Even though the region known as Dixie has lost much of its distinctiveness during what some have called the homogenization of the South, its life and literature continue to command attention. And individual Southerners continue to stand out for their integrity and individualism, for their downright cantankerousness and refusal to conform. This abiding interest in the South is reflected in the four articles gathered under the rubric, "A Southern Sampler," in this issue of VQR.

In "Politics and Literature: The Southern Case," Richard H. King contends that whatever else Southern writers of the literary "renaissance" were "preoccupied with, politics was not among them." A professor of American Studies at the University of Nottingham, Mr. King is a native of Tennessee who received his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina. He later received a doctorate in history from the University of Virginia in 1971. He is the author of The Party of Eros, as well as A Southern Renaissance: The Cultural Awakening of the American South, A Study of Southern Intellectuals, published in 1980.

In "A Southerner Confronting the South," Leslie W. Dunbar discusses the life of Southern writer, civil rights activist, individualist, and non-conformist, Lillian Smith, whom he describes as "that good and brilliant person, that person of boundless hopes and dissatisfaction." Mr. Dunbar came to know Lillian Smith while serving as executive director of the Southern Regional Council, the South's oldest biracial organization, during the turbulent years of the civil rights movement. He later moved from Atlanta to New York, where he served as executive director of the Field Foundation.