Fred Gipson Papers

Texas novelist and journalist Frederick Benjamin Gipson was born February 7, 1908, in Mason, TX, and is best known for his novel, Old Yeller. He graduated from high school in 1926, worked various jobs until he attended the University of Texas from 1933-37. Although he did not complete his degree, he found work as a reporter for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times from 1938-40. He began working as a freelance writer in 1940, publishing many short stories, especially in the Southwest Review. His first non-fiction book, Fabulous Empire : Colonel Zack Miller’s Story, was published in 1946, and his first fictional work, Hound-Dog Man in 1949.

Gipson went on to publish many more fiction and non-fiction works, winning numerous awards, and garnering special recognition for Old Yeller, which was pronounced a classic almost immediately after its publication in 1956. Although many of his fictional works were written for young audiences, “Fred Gipson’s tales of the Texas hill country have charmed young and old, in print and film, for more than three decades... (He) was a top-notch storyteller, he had a good ear for dialect and a light hand in transcribing it. He handled well, if not very originally, that most familiar them in American fiction: initiation,” (William T. Pilkington, Twentieth Century Western Writers). Old Yeller, Savage Sam, and Hound Dog Man (as Return of the Texan) were all produced as films, working from scripts by Gipson. The author died at his home near Mason, in 1973.