Austin Merrill Moore (1903-1957) was born in Columbia, Tennessee, to novelist and historian John Trotwood Moore and Mary Brown Daniel Moore. He attained a bachelor's degree in 1924 and a doctorate of medicine in 1928 from Vanderbilt University. As a member of the Fugitive Group with Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, and others, Moore published many poems from 1922 to 1926 in the poetry magazine, The Fugitive, and in Fugitives, An Anthology of Verse (1928). Over his life, he published more than forty volumes of poetry and wrote between 50,000 and 500,000 sonnets. In 1935, Moore established a private practice in Boston. He also taught neurology at Harvard Medical School and at Boston City Hospital where he carried out research on alcoholism and drug addiction. During World War II in New Zealand and the South Pacific, Moore volunteered his services to aid soldiers in the U. S. Army.