The Southwest Writers Series was a collection of pamphlets published by the Steck-Vaughn Co. in Austin, Texas, 1967-1971.
A complete set contains 37 pamphlets. But dealers list the set as Nos. 1-33, 35-38.
No. 34 was planned and promoted but never published. The missing pamphlet was supposed to be about Ramon Adams, surely the most famous writer born in Moscow, Texas.
I’m interested in pamphlets in general and this set in particular. I’m also interested in forgotten writers, or nearly forgotten writers. Adams is an odd case — someone that scholars didn’t want to fall into obscurity, but who somehow fell anyway.
Adams, 1889-1976, began life as a musician and headed the violin department at the University of Arkansas for a while. He had an accident while cranking a Model T that ended his career. His wife had a dream of running a candy store, and the couple did well.
Adams’s avocation was writing. He had grown up near a minor cattle trail and had a lifelong habit of talking to cowboys. His first book, Cowboy Lingo, was about the language. He wrote 24 books. Two were published after he died.
His best known might be Burs Under the Saddle, a look at all the stuff that writers get wrong about the history of the West. I heard of Adams by reading A.C. Greene, who admired Adams’s Six-Guns and Saddle Leather: A Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets on Western Outlaws and Gunmen. Greene described him as “a strange sort of man who had facets of personality unlooked for in a historical and bibliographical assembler.”
People who knew Ramon well enough to be invited to one of his Sunday afternoon “teas” can tell of some afternoons when Ramon would sit without saying a word for many minutes at a time, the guests obliged to do likewise. His talk, if it began again, was pleasant; he knew and loved the southwestern book world.
J. Frank Dobie, the subject of pamphlet No. 1, used to wring his hands about whether there was a literature of the Southwest. (The handwringing was dramatic. He taught a course on the subject at the University of Texas.)
I like the literature of the Southwest. But it seems to me that the best books are neglected, while the popular books often depict a place I don’t recognize.
• Sources: A.C. Greene, The 50+ Best Books on Texas; Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1998, pp. 82-3.
The Texas Archives has a note on the Ramon Adams Collection at the Dallas Public Library here:
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