Dorothy Scarborough

Among 1920s literary enthusiasts, Dorothy Scarborough was a familiar name, especially in her home state of Texas and in New York, where she taught at Columbia University. Initially well-known among Baylor University students for her popular English and journalism classes, she gained national prominence after the publication of several of her books—most notably the controversial book The Wind. A trailblazing female scholar, her work spanned from novels to folklore, from short stories to poetry. 

Emily Dorothy Scarborough, or “Dottie” as she was known to friends and family, was born on January 27, 1878 in Mount Carmel, Texas. Her parents were Mary Adelaide and John Bledsoe Scarborough, who was a Confederate veteran and prominent lawyer. The family moved to Sweetwater, TX in 1882, hoping the drier climate would help Mrs. Scarborough’s health, but five years later they moved to Waco so that the children could attend Baylor. Dorothy’s brother George attended law school at the University of Texas and became a successful playwright, and her sister Martha attended Baylor and Vassar and published three books. Like her siblings, writing was in Dorothy’s blood. 

Dorothy Scarborough received her bachelor’s in English in 1896 at age eighteen and her master’s in English in 1899, both from Baylor, and she returned to the university as a faculty member in 1905, teaching English. While teaching at Baylor, she spent her summers continuing her graduate studies at the University of Chicago, and she also taught a popular Sunday School class for college men at First Baptist Church Waco. In 1910 Scarborough took a year of leave to attend the University of Oxford, although they did not yet award degrees to women. After she returned, she taught the first journalism course available in the state of Texas. She moved to New York in 1916, where she finished her doctorate at Columbia University, and her dissertation, “The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction,” became a standard reference work on the topic among English scholars and students. She was hired immediately upon graduation at Columbia, where she would spend the rest of her career teaching creative writing focused on short stories and novels. Baylor awarded her an honorary doctorate in literature in 1923 in recognition of her accomplishments.

Scarborough’s first publication was a collection of poems entitled Fugitive Verses, which she published in 1912. Her first novel, In the Land of Cotton, which was published in 1923, examined the sharecropping system in Texas. Two years later she published three of her most famous works: The Unfair Sex, On the Trail of Negro Folksongs, and The Wind. The Unfair Sex was a partially autobiographical serialized novel based on her experiences at Oxford. She was disappointed with the profound sexism she encountered and the lack of provisions for women’s education at such a prestigious institution, which purported to value truth and learning above all else. On the Trail of Negro Folksongs was her first book-length venture as a folklorist. She had developed an interest in the topic growing up, and she conducted fieldwork and literary research to compile the folksongs found within this work.

The Wind is the most well-known of her writings, partially because of the controversy that it sparked. She first published it anonymously to garner publicity, but the novel’s negative portrayal of frontier life in West Texas ruffled more than a few feathers among Texans who accused the unknown author of slandering their state. The book is set during a severe drought in the 1880s in West Texas, and it portrays a female protagonist who is eventually driven mad by the wind and sand she encounters. The novel presents a stark contrast to the characterization of West Texas by most male authors at the time, who generally favored a more romanticized view of the West and of frontier life. After much speculation about the author, she finally revealed her secret and the controversy softened. The book was made into a silent movie starring the popular actress Lillian Gish in 1928, solidifying its impact on broader American culture. The book’s enduring legacy derives in part from its feminist overtones: Scarborough not only challenged a romanticized characterization of the American West by narrating a woman’s perspective of frontier life, she critiqued the scarcity of options for women outside of marriage and called attention to the sexual violence that many women silently endured. 

Scarborough published several more novels, including Impatient Griselda, Can’t Get a Redbird, and The Stretch-Berry Smile, all set in the South, but none surpassed her 1925 publications in popularity. She began compiling another folksong collection, called A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains, which contained Appalachian folksongs, but she died of a heart attack in her sleep on November 7, 1935. The book was published posthumously in 1937. 

Dorothy Scarborough’s success as both professor and author inspired many young people to imitate her. Numerous students, particularly female students, looked to her as their inspiration to pursue writing or to pursue a doctorate at a time when very few women did so. Her writing was not without fault; it reflected a nostalgia for the rural South that at times perpetuated racial stereotypes, but this nostalgia was frequently tempered by her questioning of gender norms surrounding women’s education and marriage. Scarborough’s legacy still lingers today in the state of Texas, and particularly at Baylor: a legacy as teacher, scholar, and writer.