J. Frank Dobie - Early Writing Career

Early Writing Career

Dobie began to publish his first articles in 1919. In 1920 he wrote articles mostly about Longhorn cattle and life in the southwest. Dobie left the faculty at the University of Texas to work his uncle's ranch in La Salle County, north of Laredo, where he discovered a desire to put the rich experience of Texas ranch life and southwestern folklore into words.

After a year on the ranch, he returned to the University of Texas and began to use its library and the resources of the Texas Folklore Society to write articles about the vanishing way of life on rural Texas ranches. In 1922, he became secretary of the Texas Folklore Society and began a program for publication. He held the post of secretary-editor of the society for twenty-one years. In 1923, unable to get a promotion without a Ph.D., Dobie accepted a job at Oklahoma A&M University as the chair of the English department. While in Oklahoma, he wrote for the Country Gentleman. He returned to Austin in 1925 after receiving a token promotion with the help of his friends.

After returning to Austin, he published his first book, A Vaquero of the Brush Country in 1929, which helped establish him as a voice about Texas and southwestern culture. In the title, Dobie claimed that the book was based "partly on the reminiscences of John Young." However, the entire book, except one chapter, "The Bloody Border," was actually written by John Young. The matter of the authorship of "A Vaquero of the Brush Country" was ultimately resolved in litigation between Young's descendants and the Estate of J. Frank Dobie and the University of Texas, holders of interests in the copyright. The outcome of the litigation established John Young and J. Frank Dobie as joint authors of "A Vaquero of the Brush Country." John Young was an open-range vaquero who had fought against the encroachment of barbed wire.

In 1930, Dobie published Coronado's Children, a collection of folklore about lost mines and lost treasures. This was followed by a series of books in the 1930s, leading up to the publication in 1941 of The Longhorns, which is considered one of the best descriptions of the traditions of the Texas Longhorn cattle breed during the 19th century. In 1937, Dobie was visiting a friend in El Paso, prominent attorney, Thomas Calloway Lea, Jr., and after seeing the art work of Lea's son, Tom Lea, asked him to illustrate the book that he was working on then, Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver. Tom Lea would also do the illustrations for The Longhorns and a book on John C. Duval (Texas pioneer). Dobie and Lea would be good friends for the rest of Dobie's life.

In 1939, Dobie began publishing a Sunday newspaper column in which he routinely poked fun at Texas politics. A liberal Democrat, he often found an easy target for his words in state politicians. Regarding state politics, he once wrote, "When I get ready to explain homemade fascism in America, I can take my example from the state capitol of Texas."