Madison Jones was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 21, 1925. He was the son of a Presbyterian businessman, and spent his early years living in suburban Nashville. When Jones was 14, his father purchased Sycamore Farm in hill country 25 miles north of the city.
After graduating from Vanderbilt in 1949 (where he studied under Donald Davidson) and getting a master"s degree at the University of Florida (where he was a student of Andrew Nelson Lytle), he taught English at the University of Tennessee before accepting a creative writing position at Auburn University in 1956.
He published almost a dozen novels, and was considered "one of the major figures of contemporary southern letters". At 17, Jones dropped out of Vanderbilt University to become a farmer, moving to Sycamore Farm where he lived for a year and a half. He became associated with the Southern Agrarians, which proved a great influence on his later work.
He retired from Auburn in 1987, having been a longtime writer in residence.
