Vardis Fisher: A Bibliography

G E O R G E K E L L O G G University of Idaho Vardis Fisher: A Bibliography PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION (1969) Since 1960, when the first edition of this bibliography was published in the University of Idaho Library’s Bookmark (sup­ plement to Volume 13, number 3), the reputation of Vardis Fisher has taken on the character of a marked though “modest” revival. I set quotes around the word modest, not because of queasiness, but because that is the exact term used to describe Fisher’s present situation in a biocritical study by Joseph Flora, published in 1965 as part of the Twayne United States Author Series. Mr. Flora’s book can be said to be perhaps the chief evidence of the validity of the said revival. Other such evidence, however, is forthcoming—and this in addition to the one fifth more numerous citations to be found in this edition of the bibliography. For one thing, Mr. Fisher was honored in September, 1963, when the editors of the American Book Collector published a special Vardis Fisher issue containing a number of valuable articles on the author by scholars and friends. Again, in the following year, critical attention focused on Mr. Fisher when he was invited to participate in a Symposium on the Western Novel conducted by the South Dakota Review, in which he sat in such assured literary company as that of Frank Waters, Frederick Manfred, Walter Van Tilberg Clark, Michael Straight, and Paul Horgan, most of whom singled out at least one Fisher title for special honors among Western novels. A similar accolade arose in 1966 from a Symposium on the Historical Novel held at Washington State University, where Fisher was re­ ferred to, more than once, as “dean of Western writers.” In addition to all this, the number of articles on Vardis Fisher in reputable academic magazines, and the number of completed or currently in-progress masters and doctoral dissertations bearing on Fisher, has stepped-up sharply in the last nine years. Nor did the author himself fail in this same autumnal period to support his reputation with significant publications. Suicide or Murder? the re-organized documentary materials which he took from his years of research on A Tale of Valor (1958) was well received in 46 Western American Literature 1962 by historians and experts. Thomas Wolfe as I knew Him, and Other Essays (1963) provided an indispensible collection of his essays. Mountain Man (1965) was, with a few notable exceptions, reviewed with as high praise as any comparable piece of Western Americana. He was awarded for it the 1965 Western Heritage Award for the outstanding Western novel of the year. After his sudden death in July, 1968, memorial articles by John Hutchens, John Milton, and Ronald Tabor appeared in general and academic periodicals. The compiler would like to point out that in revising the 1960 bibliography, he has worked retroactively to garner older, overlooked citations, as well as those published from 1960 to 1969. His most interesting find among older publications, he feels, is the bloc of entries representing original publications of Vardis Fisher’s poetry, a genre which the novelist discounted with weighty modesty, but concerning which a scholar may have a contrasting evaluation. Indeed, at this writing a new Ph. D. dissertation on Fisher’s poetry by (Mrs.) Dorys C. Grover has been approved by her thesis committee at Washington State University. Other recent dissertations on Fisher listed in the Winter, 1969, issue of Western American Literature are the following: G. F. Day “The Uses of History in the Novels of Vardis Fisher.” (Ph. D.) University of Colorado, 1968. A. K. Thomas “The Epic of Evolution, Its Etiology and Art: A Study of Vardis Fisher’s Testament of Man.” (Ph. D.) Pennsylvania State University, 1967. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION The literary reputation of Vardis Fisher, the eminent Idaho novelist, in both popular and critical circles, has been a fluctuating one. In fact, it might be said that Mr. Fisher has had three such reputations—as a writer of regional and naturalistic novels in the late twenties and early thirties (e.g. Dark Bridwell and the Vridar Hunter tetralogy); later...