Jack Boone Literary Preservation Project

Jack Happel Boone was born in 1903 in Gibson County, Tennessee. He spent his youth in Chester County, Tennessee, and attended public schools in Henderson. Educated at Memphis State College and Vanderbilt University, he began writing professionally as early as 1932. Between 1932 and 1944, he was published in such publications as Prairie Schooner, Household Magazine, Southern Review, A Vanderbilt Miscellany, and Story. He taught at such prestigious universities as Clemson, Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech, Mississippi State, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, as well as lectured at the University of Iowa.

Boone wrote regularly from 1932 until the mid-1950s. His novel, Dossie Bell is Dead received critical acclaim after its publication in 1939. Woods Girl is the long-buried sequel to that novel. Boone wrote most of his works in a manner that would reflect the language, speech and tradition of his subjects. His works provide a glimpse of backwoods and rural life in West Tennessee in the 1930s and 1940s including many archaic customs held over from far earlier times. The majority of his works are set in rural West Tennessee in the area commonly known as The Nation. Boone remained primarily in Chester County until his death in 1966.