FOUR PORTRAITS AND ONE SUBJECT

In 1960, when the collected papers of Bernard De Voto were made available at Stanford University, four of his friends and admirers spoke at the ceremony and this collective tribute now appears here along with the bibliography of his writings. In this four-panelled profile, this embattled and sometimes intractable individualist is still very much alive- in his iconoclasm, indignation, idealism, his affection and concern for people, his respect for "history from the facts and the facts alone", non-formity which accounted for his swing from radicalism to the right and his desire to against the popular grain". Catherine Drinker Bowen, Edith R. Mirrielees, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Wallace Stegner are the four contributors and all write with great affection for the "western wild man" and appraise his importance as a tough-minded social critic and indigenous historian (rather than novelist).