The Other Texas Frontier

<p>One is tempted to say that wherever there was a frontier in America there was a counterfrontier and that the main purpose of this counterfrontier was not only to help man grow or dig or catch or kill his livng but also to put this man in communication with the traditions of his kind and thereby secure to his descendants the benefits of the free mind. -Harry Huntt Ransom</p> <p>The reflections of Harry Huntt Ransom (1908-1976) in <i>The Other Texas Frontier</i> present an alternative to the stereotypical picture of the brash blustery heroes of the Texas frontier. Here in six highly readable essays Ransom posits a thesis of the counterfrontier: a quiet settling of the land by thoughtful undramatic citizens who he says were the other Texans-the Texans without guns. Three of the essays are profiles of gifted men from Texas' nineteenth century: Ashbel Smith physician diplomat and first president of the Board of Regents of the University of Texas; Sherman Goodwin physician horticulturalist bibliophile (and Ransom's own grandfather); and Swante Palm Swedish immigrant bibliographer and generous patron of the University of Texas libraries.</p> <p>Harry Huntt Ransom one of Texas' most accomplished men of letters and for forty-one years an integral part of the University of Texas System as professor dean president and chancellor leaves an extraordinary legacy to Texas for both his educational and literary service. Though educated out of state he returned to his native Texas after completion of his PhD at Yale to teach research and write in the fields of copyright law literary history and bibliography. As founder of the Humanities Research Center he was squarely in the tradition of the men he was writing about.</p> <p>Compiled and edited after Ransom's death by his wife Hazel H. Ransom the literary sketches of <i>The Other Texas Frontier</i> form a book that Ransom himself had outlined but had not completed.</p>