Dixon Wecter
Dixon Wecter was an influential American historian and author, born on January 12, 1906, in Houston, Texas. Raised primarily by his mother after his parents' divorce, he excelled academically, graduating as valedictorian from Colorado City High School and later earning degrees from Baylor University and Yale University. Wecter became a Rhodes Scholar, furthering his studies at Oxford University. His career in academia included teaching positions at several universities, notably UCLA and UC Berkeley, where he specialized in American history.
Wecter was a prolific author, known for his works such as "The Saga of American Society" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," the latter addressing the challenges faced by returning soldiers after World War II. He gained recognition for his role as the literary editor of the Mark Twain Papers, contributing significantly to Twain scholarship. Despite a promising career cut short by his untimely death in 1950, Wecter's legacy lives on through his publications and his influence on American historical studies. His work remains an important part of the discourse on American social history and literature.
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Dixon Wecter
Writer
- Born: January 12, 1906
- Birthplace: Houston, Texas
- Died: June 24, 1950
- Place of death: Sacramento, California
Biography
Dixon Wecter, the son of John Joseph Wecter and Eugenia Dixon Wecter, was born in Houston, Texas, on January 12, 1906. His parents apparently divorced some time before 1910, as the 1910 census lists Wecter as living only with his mother in Brewster County, Texas, where his mother taught school. By 1920, Wecter and his mother had moved to Colorado City, Texas, where his mother taught at a high school. Wecter graduated from Colorado City High School in 1921 and was named class valedictorian. In 1925, he received a bachelor’s degree from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and the following year he earned his master’s degree at Yale University. In 1928, he became a Rhodes Scholar and earned another bachelor’s degree at Oxford University in 1930.
Wecter began his teaching career at the University of Texas and also spent a year teaching at the University of Denver. From 1934 to 1939, he taught at the University of Colorado. Meanwhile, he received his doctorate in literature from Yale in 1936. The following year, he published The Saga of American Society: A Record of Social Aspiration, 1607-1937, which was reviewed favorably in The New York Times. With a bright future ahead of him, Wecter married Elizabeth Farrar in December, 1937.
Two years later, he joined the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). The Hero in America: A Chronicle of Hero-Worship, a book he published in 1941, was a study of hero worship in American society. In 1942, he received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. As a Guggenheim fellow, Wecter devoted his research to the problems American soldiers faced when they returned home after they fought in a war. His book resulting from that research, When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1944), received the $2,500 Houghton Mifflin Life-in-America Prize.
In 1944, Sydney University in Australia invited Wecter to become the first person to serve as a visiting professor of American history. The following year, his former alma mater, Baylor University, awarded him a doctoral degree. While he was teaching at UCLA, he chaired the research staff at the Henry E. Huntington Library in nearby San Marino from 1946 to 1949. In 1946, Mark Twain’s daughter, Clara Clemens, and the directors of the Mark Twain Company invited Wecter to serve as the literary editor of the Mark Twain Papers, replacing Bernard DeVoto.
Wecter lectured at the University of Chicago in 1946 and 1947. In 1948, he received the Commonwealth Club’s Gold Medal for Literary Achievement for his book, Age of the Great Depression, 1929-1941. In 1949, he worked for the State Department on a mission to South America. Later that year, he joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley as a professor of American history and moved the Mark Twain Papers to that campus. In his capacity as editor of the Mark Twain Papers, Wecter published two collections of Twain’s letters, Mark Twain to Mrs. Fairbanks and The Love Letters of Mark Twain. This work made him realize the need for a major new biography of Twain that would be based on information available in the extensive primary documents under his control.
On June 24, 1950, Wecter attended a banquet in Sacramento, California, and addressed the California State Centennials Commission and the California Library Association. After the banquet, he suffered a heart attack and died a short time later. His widow published the portion of the Twain biography that he had completed as Sam Clemens of Hannibal in 1952. During the same year, Harper and Brothers published Wecter’s edition of Report from Paradise, which contains the full texts of Twain’s writings about his short story, “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.” A popular lecturer and a respected historian with a keen knowledge of America’s social history, Wecter also made major contributions to Twain studies and wrote many articles for publications such as Atlantic Monthly, Saturday Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The New York Times.