Copyright © the Estate of Ross F. Lockridge, Jr., 1948 , 1998, 2000, All rights reserved

Selected Source Materials for Raintree County

"For Raintree County is not the country of the perishable fact. It is the country of the enduring fiction. The clock in the Court House Tower on page five of the Raintree County Atlas is always fixed at nine o'clock, and it is summer and the days are long."

--Raintree County, by Ross Lockridge, Jr.


Including Sketches by Ross Lockridge, Jr.
Other Materials and Facsimiles Apropos

 

Draft page from Raintree County, Ross Lockridge, Jr.  (120 k)

Original Raintree County Map Sketch by the Author   (73 k)   & as Published   (65 k)

"The Riddle of Raintree County" Map Cover Sketch  by the Author  (77 k)

Raintree County Cover Sketch    (62 k)

Town of Waycross Sketch (176 k) & as Published (37 k)

Sketch by Ross Lockridge, Jr. :Danwebster Graveyard

Source Materials:

"Dozens of established members of the family of writers, from Homer and Moses to Harriet Beecher Stowe and Whitman, crisscross the pages of Raintree County, but he felt especially buoyed by those obscure writers within his own family tree. The Shockley family archive was there at hand in Boston, a treasure that gave him a sense of fellowship and potency. He had the Henry County Atlas with its fine lithographs showing the old courthouse with the hands of its clock forever fixed at nine. He had tintypes of the Shockleys standing at the Old Home Place and of a reclining John Wesley Shockley musing on life and holding a copy of The Indianapolis News. He had the family's Civil War letters, the love letters of John Wesley Shockley and Emma Rhoton, and specimens of handwriting with sentimental posies exchanged at Henry County's vanished Pedee College. He had the old ledger of his great-grandfather William B. Shockley-doctor, preacher, farmer-with its botanical recipes and testimonials.
      It was this Shockley who began the family tradition of versifying, and my father treasured the parchments of his two lengthy "pomes" on tobacco...."

--From, Shade of the Raintree, Larry Lockridge, p 239

Poem, "...'Tis Summer and the days are long." By John W. Shockley

Poem, "A Summer Dream," by John W. Shockley

Emma Rhoton and John Wesley Shockley's letters:

Facsimile Transcriptions

The Dance of the Bottles, poem by John Wesley Shockley using the alias, Will Western (358 k)

William B. Shockley (1801-76), poem: Tobacco, p. 1: p. 2, p. 3.

"Some do it chew and some it smoke
whilst some it up their nose do poke."

William B. Shockley (1801-76), From "Book of Miscellanies" botanical recipes on Cathartics; and Reasons for believing.

 

Other Materials Apropos the Author:

Ross Lockridge, Jr. LETTERS from Paris, 1933-4 (age 19-20):

The "idea-genesis of Raintree County"-- A brief history with transcription of letter: April 30, 1934 "I'm now installed at my new residence, 4bis Rue d'Ulm, Paris...." Facsimiles, Ap30, 1934 p. 1  (151 k) p. 2 (151 k)

Oct 8, 1933 p1, 2 - "Before I give you the latest developments along the European front . . . ."

Oct. 23, 1933 p1, 2 - "I write this letter in the gray of Paris morning . . . ."

Nov. 3, 1933 p1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - "This is going to be a huge letter . . . ."

Nov. 19, 1933 p1, 2, 3, 4 - "Work at the Sorbonne now promises to be very exacting . . . ."

Feb. 10, 1934 p1, 2, 3, 4 - "Have you felt any alarm over the exasperated condition of Paris?"

May 9, 1934 p.1 & p.2: "I'm hitting mean weather just at present in my school work . . . ."

Ross Lockridge, Jr.'s Notes on James Joyce, Sept. 1942 (371 k), and Spring 1943 (429 k).

To Planning notes for "The Dream of the Flesh of Iron", an unpublished poem by Ross Lockridge, Jr.

Example of Ross, Jr.'s Shorthand    (84 k)  and an account of their decipherment, Unlocking the Lockridge Diaries, by Mary Louise Gilman, 1995.

Ross Lockridge, Jr.'s attention to details of historic accuracy

 


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