Thomas, Roy Edwin 1917-

PERSONAL:

Born 1917, in Conway, AR. Education: Attained Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 19 Union Sq. W., New York, NY 10003.

CAREER:

Anthropologist and folklorist in the Appalachian, Ozark, and Ouachita Mountains; writer.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Insurance Information Sources, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1971.

(Editor) Authentic Ozarks Stories, illustrated by Michael Butler, Dox Books (Little Rock, AR), 1972.

(Compiler) Popular Folk Dictionary of Ozarks Talk, Dox Books (Little Rock, AR), 1972.

(Compiler) Southern Appalachia, 1885-1915: Oral Histories from Residents of the State Corner Area of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 1991.

(Compiler) Come Go with Me: Old-Timer Stories from the Southern Mountains, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1994.

Contributor to scholarly periodicals, including Missouri Folklore Society Journal.Thomas's papers are collected at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

SIDELIGHTS:

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Roy Edwin Thomas traveled through the Southern Appalachian, Ozark, and Ouachita Mountains and talked to the senior citizens he found there about life in the mountains around the turn of the twentieth century. Many of those he interviewed were eighty years of age or older, and he collected not only their practical advice on such activities as smoking meat, spinning flax, and making soap, but also their stories and legends. Thomas collected these oral histories in several volumes, including Authentic Ozarks Stories and Come Go with Me: Old-Timer Stories from the Southern Mountains. The latter collection was particularly well received by reviewers who felt it held value for children and young adults. Horn Book critic Ann A. Flowers called Come Go with Me "a splendid collection" with "fascinating reading and background information." Booklist correspondent Chris Sherman felt that Thomas captured the voices of those he interviewed so well "that readers will come away with a sense of having heard the stories in person."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 1994, Chris Sherman, review of Come Go with Me: Old-Timer Stories from the Southern Mountains, p. 1592.

Horn Book, July-August, 1994, Ann A. Flowers, review of Come Go with Me, p. 466.

Publishers Weekly, February 21, 1994, review of Come Go with Me, p. 256.

School Library Journal, July, 1994, Kay McPherson, review of Come Go with Me, p. 127.