John fox jr biography

Biographies

John Fox Jr. (1863-1919) The first American to sell more than a million copies of a novel, was one of the most famous writers of the early twentieth century and one of most important contributors. His stories helped fuel magazine sales and he serialized in its pages his most popular novels, including and , both of which were top-ten bestsellers in the years surrounding their publication. These frankly sentimental tales lack the ironic and formal complexity of high modernism, but they do articulate a theme familiar to readers: the chaotic contest between an international modernity and distinct, local cultures seemingly threatened by technology and urbanization. Fox’s stories often entangle young lovers in these larger historical plots, offering romantic resolutions to these otherwise intractable cultural conflicts. Fox’s most famous novel, , deals so powerfully and directly with these familiar American themes that it not only sold broadly, but was adapted four times for the screen as a Western, by directors (in 1914), (in 1916), and (in 1936). John Fox Jr. Scribner’s T

Born near Paris, Kentucky, on December 16, 1862, John Fox Jr. was the son of a schoolmaster in Kentucky’s Bourbon County. He enjoyed the benefits of quality education in childhood and attended Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, before graduating from Harvard in 1883. Fox then worked as a journalist in New York City before returning to Kentucky in 1885 to join his brother in a land-speculation venture that took them into the mountainous areas of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia.

In 1890 Fox moved to Big Stone Gap, Virginia, and his observations about this area and its residents became the seed for several stories, including “A Mountain Europa” and “A Cumberland Vendetta,” published in Century Magazine in 1892 and 1894 respectively, and “The Last Stetson,” published by Harper’s Weekly in 1895. According to Virginia Tech professor Edward L. Tucker, Fox’s business investments in Big Stone Gap “proved to be disastrous” and “to help recover some of the money he lost, he gave public lectures. One m

John Fox, Jr., Appalachian Author

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     1

1 Early Spring–1916     9
2 A School Teacher’s Son     12
3 Off to School     18
4 Boom and Bust, Part I     26
5 New York Reporter     35
6 A Tale of Two Cities     49
7 Boom and Bust, Part II: The Gap     58
8 A Knight of the Cumberland     76
9 Feuds and Romance     97
10 The Whirl-Wind     106
11 The Spanish-American War    119
12 The Horizontal Hail-Storm    139
13 The Road to Recovery    155
14 The Crook of the Shepherd    170
15 Cherry Blossom Correspondents     179
16 The Backward Trail     199
17 A Noble Profession     208
18 An Imperfect Union     218
19 The Eyes of a Father     237
20 West and East—North and South     247
21 Last Dance     260
22 Surviving     266

Afterword     269
Chronology     277
Notes     281
Bibliography     304
Index     311

Book Reviews & Awards

  • “engagingly written…a good job”—Journal of Appalachian Studies
  • “rich and revealing…meticulously researched…well-written…a very welcome addition”—Appalachian Heri

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