Dorothy Scarborough

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**Dorothy Scarborough**
Born:	January 27, 1878 Mount Caramel, Texas
Died:	November 7, 1935 New York City, New York
Occupation:	Writer, professor and literary critic
Literary movement:	American folklore
Influences:	[[]], [[]], [[]], [[]], [[]]
Influenced:	Carson McCullers, [[]], [[]], [[]], [[]], [[]], [[]]

Dorothy Scarborough was a United States writer who wrote about Texas, folk culture, cotton farming, ghost stories and a woman's life in the Midwest.

Even though Scarborough's writings are identified with Texas, she studied at University of Chicago and Oxford University and later taught literature at Columbia University.

While receiving her PhD from Columbia, she wrote a dissertation, "The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (1917)". Sylvia Ann Grider writes in a critical introduction ^[1] the dissertation "was so widely acclaimed by her professors and colleagues that it was published and it has become a basic reference work." It is still in print today, and has been credited with being the first work of modern science fiction studies.^[2]

Dorothy Scarborough came in contact with many writers in New York, including Edna Ferber and Vachel Lindsey. She taught creative writing classes at Columbia. Among her creative writing students was Carson McCullers, who took her first college writing class from Scarborough.^[1]

Her most critically acclaimed book, The Wind was later made into a film of the same name, starring Lilian Gish.

1 Original Works
2 Early Life
3 Biographical/Critical Essays
4 Notes

[edit] Original Works

Fugitive Verses (1912), original verses

Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (1917); available in its entirety at Google Book Search

From a Southern Porch (1919), viewable in full at Google Book Search or viewable at the Portal to Texas History

Humorous Ghost Stories (1921) edited

In the Land of Cotton (1923)

On the Trail of Negro Folksongs (1925)

The Wind (novel) (1925), considered her most acclaimed work.

The Unfair Sex (serialized, 1925-26)

Impatient Griselda (1927)

Can't Get a Redbird (1929)

Stretch-Berry Smile (1932)

The Story of Cotton (1933) juvenile reader

Selected Short Stories of Today (1935)

A Song Catcher in the Southern Mountains (1937, posthumous)

Works by Dorothy Scarborough at Project Gutenberg:

Famous Modern Ghost Stories 1921; edited by Dorothy Scarborough, with critical introduction

[edit] Early Life

Born in Mount Carmel, Texas on January 27, 1887 at the age of four she moved to Sweetwater Texas for her mother's health, as her mother needed the dry climate for her health. The family soon left Sweetwater in 1887, so that the Scarborough children could get a good education at Baylor College.

[edit] Biographical/Critical Essays

Biographical Essay on the Handbook of Texas Online Foreword to The Wind by Sylvia Ann Grider, Barker Texas History Center series, University of Texas Press, 1979.