Vance Randolph

Who was Vance Randolph?

Vance Randolph was a famous folklorist who studied the folklore of the Ozarks in particular. He wrote a number of books on topics including the Ozarks, Little Blue Books, and juvenile fiction.

Randolph was born in Pittsburg, Kansas, the son of a lawyer and a teacher. Despite being born in a privileged home, Randolph dropped out of high school to work on leftist leaning publications. This did not stop him from attending college and he graduated from what is now Pittsburg State University in 1914. He pursued graduate work at Clark University and received a Master of Arts degree in psychology. He later dedicated his book Ozark Superstitions to the memory of his Clark mentor G. Stanley Hall.

He moved to Pineville, McDonald County, Missouri in 1919. He never moved away from the Ozarks and remained in the Ozark Mountains from 1920 until his death. He met his first wife in McDonald County, Marie Wardlaw Wilbur, and made a living by writing for sporting and outdoor publications. While writing, Randolph used pseudonyms, but never for his work on the Ozark culture.

In 1927, Randolph had his first article published in the Journal of American Folklore, based on work on Ozark dialect and folk beliefs. The dialect work led to multiple publications throughout the 1920s and 1930s in American Speech and Dialect Notes.