Background

Harold Richard Preece was born on January 16, 1906, in Bull Creek Community, Texas, United States. He was the son of David Wilburn and Hallie May (Harner) Preece.

Education

From 1926 to 1927, Preece attended Texas Christian University and studied at the University of Texas from 1932 to 1933.

Career

Preece began his career as a cub reporter for the Austin Statesman (now Austin American-Statesman), Austin, Texas, in 1922, at the age of sixteen. He began selling articles to magazines in 1925, forging a career for himself as a freelance writer and specialist in American and Texas folklore. He lectured on Americana at Columbia University and Simmons College (now Simmons University), and he worked closely with John and Alan Lomax, collecting the Archives of American Folk Music for the Library of Congress. Preece also was a folklore editor of the Texas Writer's Project, an American consultant for Adventure and a Texas specialist and feature writer for the Real West.

Preece's first book was Lighting up Liberia (1942), followed by Dew on Jordan (1946), Living Pioneers (1952), Lone Star Man (1961) and The Dalton Gang (1963).

Achievements

• Harold Richard Preece is best known as a specialist in American and Texas folklore, writing for publications such as Adventure magazine, American Spectator and The Nation. Preece assisted the ethnomusicologists, John and Alan Lomax, in collecting archives of American folk music for the Library of Congress.
  
  He was a co-author of a combination book and long-playing record set, The Book of the Bad Man (1963), and he contributed numerous stories and articles to magazines and anthologies and was the author of a biographical sketch of Robert E. Howard, the creator of the Conan the Barbarian character, titled "The Last Celt." After Howard's early death, Preece was viewed as an authority on the author.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Lighting Up Liberia 1943
  • Lone Star Man: The Life of Ira Aten 1960
  • The Dalton Gang 1963
  • Living Pioneers 1952
  • Dew on Jordan 1946

Views

Besides other topics, Preece wrote on civil rights, an unusual topic for a southern white man. In "Confessions of an Ex-Nordic: The Depression Not an Unmixed Evil," Preece claimed that the shared sufferings of the Great Depression changed his outlook on race relations.

Membership

Preece was a member of the New York Intercultural Society, Westerners', the Western History Association and the Cherokee National Historical Society.

Personality

Preece was a childhood friend and correspondent of Robert E. Howard.

Connections

Preece was married to Ruth Kruskal. They were the parents of Hillel David Preece. Preece met Oklahoma poet Winona Morris Nation in 1978 and lived with her in his later years.

Father:

David Wilburn Preece

23 June 1871 - 23 March 1956

Mother:

Hallie May (Harner) Preece

29 December 1881 - 6 February 1972

Wife:

Ruth Kruskal Preece

Son:

Hillel David Preece

Partner:

Winona Morris Nation

Friend:

Robert E. Howard

22 January 1906 - 11 June 1936

Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre.

colleague:

John Lomax

23 September 1867 - 26 January 1948

John Avery Lomax was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist and a folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk music.

colleague:

Alan Lomax

31 January 1915 - 19 July 2002

Alan Lomax was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century.

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series (Volume 198) brings researchers the most recent data on the world's most popular authors.
  2010