A Guide to The Morris Cook Collection of J. Frank Dobie Materials, 1916-1988 (bulk 1941-1964)

Biographical Note

J. Frank Dobie was born on September 26, 1888. He left the ranch when he was sixteen and moved to Alice, where he lived with his Dubose grandparents and finished high school. In 1906 he enrolled in Southwestern University in Georgetown, where he met Bertha McKee, whom he married in 1916, and Professor Albert Shipp Pegues, his English teacher, who introduced him to English poetry, particularly the Romantics, and encouraged him as a writer. He worked two summers as a reporter, first for the San Antonio Express and then the Galveston Tribune. He got his first teaching job in 1910 in Alpine, where he was also the principal, play director, and editor of the school paper. He returned to Georgetown in 1911 and taught in the Southwestern University preparatory school until 1913, when he went to Columbia to work on his master's degree. With his new M.A. he joined the University of Texas faculty in 1914. At this time he also joined the Texas Folklore Society. Dobie left the university in 1917 and served for two years in the field artillery in World War I. In 1919 he published his first articles. He resigned his position at the university in 1920 to manage his uncle Jim Dobie's ranch. During this year on the Rancho de Los Olmos with the vaqueros and the stock and the land that had been part of his formation, Dobie discovered his calling-to transmute all the richness of this life and land and culture into literature.

Dobie returned to Austin and the university in 1921. On April 1, 1922, Dobie became secretary of the Texas Folklore Society. He immediately began a publication program. Legends of Texas (1924) carried the seeds of many of his later publications. Dobie served as the society's secretary-editor for twenty-one years and built the society into a permanent professional organization. When the university would not promote him without a Ph.D., Dobie accepted the chairmanship of the English department at Oklahoma A&M, where he stayed from 1923 to 1925. During these two years he began writing for the Country Gentleman. With considerable help from his friends on the UT campus, he was able to return in 1925 with a token promotion. He began writing articles on Texas history, culture, and folklore for magazines and periodicals.

His Vaquero of the Brush Country, published in 1929, established him as a spokesman of Texas and southwestern culture. Two years later Dobie published Coronado's Children (1931), the tales of those free spirits who abandoned society in the search for gold, lost mines, and various other grails. It won the Literary Guild Award for 1931 and, combined with his continuing success as a popular writer in Country Gentleman, made Dobie a nationally known literary figure. He was also promoted in 1933 to the rank of full professor, the first Texan non-Ph.D. to be so honored at the university. In 1942 he published the Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest, an annotated reading list. As head of the Texas Folklore Society and author of On the Open Range (1931), Tales of the Mustang (1936), The Flavor of Texas (1936), Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver (1939), and Tongues of the Monte (1947), Dobie was the state's leading spokesman and literary and cultural figure during the Texas Centennial decade, the 1930s. His first period of writing ended with the publication of The Longhorns in 1941.

He spent World War II teaching American literature in Cambridge. After the war he returned to Europe to teach in England, Germany, and Austria. Dobie's request for a continuation of his leave of absence after his European tour in 1947 was denied by the regents, and he was dismissed from the UT faculty under what became known as the "Dobie rule," which restricted faculty leaves of absence to two years except in emergencies.

After this separation Dobie devoted all of his time to writing and anthologizing. The next decade saw the publication of The Voice of the Coyote (1949), The Ben Lilly Legend (1950), The Mustangs (1952), Tales of Old Time Texas (1955), Up the Trail From Texas (1955), and I'll Tell You a Tale (1960). Before he died he published Cow People (1964) and almost finished the manuscript for Rattlesnakes, which Bertha McKee Dobie later edited and published in 1965. Dobie began writing for the Southwest Review in 1919, when it was the Texas Review, and continued the association throughout his life. Dobie wrote a Sunday newspaper column from 1939 until his death. Dobie died on September 18, 1964.

From "DOBIE, JAMES FRANK."The Handbook of Texas Online. [Accessed Thurs Jul 5 10:17:00 US/Central 2007].

Scope and Content Note

The Morris Cook Collection of J. Frank Dobie Materials is a collection by or about the Texas writer J. Frank Dobie. The collection incorporates magazines, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, notes and letters from Dobie spanning the years 1916 to 1988. The non-book items are divided into the series: J. Frank Dobie, Bertha Dobie, and Morris Cook.

The Dobie series is composed of primarily published material written by or about J. Frank Dobie and his writings. It contains letters, pamphlets, book reviews, articles, newsletters, records albums, book covers, bibliographies, periodicals, and photographs. Please note that some of the material is inscribed by Mr. Dobie to Mr. Cook. This series is divided into the following sub-series: Biographical, Letters, Record Albums, Texas Folklore Society, and Writings.

The Bertha Dobie series contains letters and articles written by Bertha Dobie, as well as a pamphlet from a tribute to her. It is divided into the sub-series: Biographical, Letters, and Writings.

The Morris Cook series is composed of letters and essays written by Cook.

Restrictions

Access Restrictions

This collection is housed at UTSA's Main Campus and must be accessed via the John Peace Library Special Collections reading room. To request access, please use the Collections Request Form.

Use Restrictions

Please contact University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections for information about permission to publish material from the collection.

Related Material

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Morris Cook Collection of J. Frank Dobie Materials, 1916, 1929-1988 (bulk 1941-1964), MS 148, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections.

Acquisition Information

The Morris Cook Collection of J. Frank Dobie Materials was purchased from Morris Cook for University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections in 1974 by the Ewing Halsell Foundation. The original purchase of Dobie materials from Cook included about 650 items, including books, magazines, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, manuscript material, notes and letters from Dobie spanning 1916 to 1988, with the bulk of the material from 1941-1964. The books have been separated from the collection and incorporated into the Special Collections inventory of the UTSA Library.

Processing Information

Processed by Traci JoLeigh Drummond, Archivist, and Mathew C. Martin, Collections Assistant, June 2007

Encoded by: Nikki Lynn Thomas, Manuscripts Archivist, October 2007

Detailed Description of the Collection