JSF Bookstore: Anthony B. Stephens

Account Login Close Panel

Preserving the legacy of Jesse Stuart and the Appalachian way of life.

I'd rather have a C student with an A character than an A student with a C character. ~ Jesse Stuart

No Items In Your Cart

Anthony B. Stephens

Subscribe to this RSS feed

Anthony B. Stephens

Anthony Stephens began his career in the field of visual creativity as staff photographer for Creativity, an annual international advertising/design competition. It became quickly evident that his talent was multi-faceted and he was approached to contribute to book layout with subsequent work being published by Harper Design International and Collins Design, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Endowed with a natural eye for design, over the next nine years Tony broadened his graphics portfolio with a large variety of print media including, but not limited to, logos, stationery, brochures, and t-shirts.

Other professional achievements encompass the position of principal at Designs on You!, owner of American Graphic Design and Advertising, Creativity Awards judge, as well as co-editor of The Big Book of Green Design published by Collins Design and distributed by HarperCollins Publishers in 2009.

He is currently spearheading the transition from traditional publishing methods to ePub production at Jesse Stuart Foundation, the largest publisher of Appalachian materials in America.

E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Miscellaneous Publications

25 April 2012 Published in Jesse Stuart

MISCELLANEOUS PUBLICATIONS

1965 1967 1968

1975 1976

1977 1978 1979 1988

Jesse Stuart Junior Books

12 April 2012 Published in Jesse Stuart

JUNIOR BOOKS

1939 1953 1954 1955

1960 1960 1961 1966

1977 1978 1979 1988

Jesse Stuart Bio

11 April 2012 Published in Jesse Stuart

JESSE STUART (AUGUST 8, 1907—FEBRUARY 17, 1984)

Jesse Stuart was born on in W-Hollow, near Riverton, Kentucky, the son of Mitchell and Martha Hilton Stuart. After graduation from local schools, he attended Lincoln Memorial University, graduating in 1929, and went on to attend graduate school at Vanderbilt University and Peabody College. He taught school in Greenup County, Kentucky, and Portsmouth, Ohio, and served as superintendent of Greenup County schools from 1932 until 1934. In 1934, his first major book of verse, Man with a Bull-Tongued Plow, appeared, and he received the Jeannette Sewal Davis poetry prize. In 1937, the award of a Guggenheim fellowship allowed him to travel abroad. During World War II he served in the United States Naval Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant (junior grade). He resumed his travels abroad by accepting the position of visiting professor of English and education at the American University, Cairo, Egypt, during 1960 and 1961; in 1962 and 1963 he served as an American specialist abroad for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the State Department. He also traveled in the Middle and Far East as a lecturer for the United States Information Service. He was the recipient of many awards, among them the Academy of Arts and Sciences award, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial award, the Berea College Centennial award for literature, the Academy of American Poets award, several honorary degrees, and a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize. In 1958 he appeared on Ralph Edwards' This Is Your Life! In 1939, he married Naomi Deane Norris; their daughter, Jessica Jane Stuart, is also an accomplished author and poet. Prior to his death on February 17, 1984, Jesse Stuart had been seriously ill and bedfast for four years, following a long history of heart attacks and a massive stroke. He was buried in the Plum Grove cemetery near his home in W-Hollow.

Jesse Stuart Short Stories

10 April 2012 Published in Jesse Stuart

1936 1941 1946 1950

1956 1963 1964 1965

1966 1968 1969 1970

1971 1972 1974 1981

1982 2003

Jesse Stuart Poetry

16 March 2012 Published in Jesse Stuart

JESSE STUART POETRY

1930 1934 1944 1952

1962 1971 1975

1976

Jesse Stuart Novels

15 March 2012 Published in Jesse Stuart

JESSE STUART NOVELS

1940194319441946

1950195319651973

Jesse Stuart: Autobiography / Biography

15 March 2012 Published in Jesse Stuart

JESSE STUART AUTOBIOGRAPHY / BIOGRAPHY

1938194919561960

1967196819701975

1977197819791988

Clyde Roy Pack

12 October 2009 Published in Featured Author's and Books

"Even though my family had little in terms of material goods, I wish everybody could have experienced a childhood like mine." -- Clyde Roy Pack, Muddy Branch

Clyde Roy Pack is an associate editor at The Paintsville Herald, where he also writes an award-winning humor column. He was an elementary and high school art and English teacher for 33 years before retiring in 1994. He lives in Paintsville with his wife of 47 years, Wilma Jean Penix Pack.

Books by Clyde Roy Pack

Muddy Branch: Memories of an Eastern Kentucky Coal Camp (2002, Jesse Stuart Foundation)
Coal-Camp Chronicles (2005, Where? Press)
Going Back: The Happy Adventures of a Coal-Camp Kid (2009, Where? Press)

Tagged under

Stacy R. Nelson

09 July 2004 Published in Featured Author's and Books

"I always wanted to be like him (Jesse Stuart), I wanted to be a writer." --Stacy R. Nelson

Stacy R. Nelson was delivered by his grandmother on a kitchen table in northeastern Kentucky in January of 1949. A one-time U. S. Army communications specialist, band member, songwriter, poet, railroad foreman, and antique log home restoration expert, Stacy's true passion has always been his writing.

Stacy's uncle, Jesse Stuart, was his greatest inspiration. "I always wanted to be like him," Stacy remembered. "I wanted to be a writer."

In recent years, Stacy lived "like a pauper" so he could devote all of his time to writing. "One winter," he said, "I practically lived on venison, cornbread, and beans, heating my house with firewood I cut from the hills. . . But that winter I added yet another manuscript to my growing list of unpublished works."

Books by Stacy R. Nelson

Gone Native (2008, Publish America)
In the Valley of the East Fork, 1774 (2009, Publish America)
Beneath the Weeping Skies (2009, Jesse Stuart Foundation)

Tagged under

Thomas D. Clark

11 October 2009 Published in Featured Author's and Books

“ A community without a sense of History, is not a community at all.” -- Thomas D. Clark

Thomas Dionysius Clark (July 14, 1903 - June 28, 2005) was perhaps Kentucky's most notable historian. Clark saved from destruction a large portion of Kentucky's printed history, which later become a core body of documents in the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. Often referred to as the "Dean of Historians" Clark is best known for his 1937 work, A History of Kentucky. Clark was named Historian Laureate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1991 — one of many honors he received.

Early years

Born in Mississippi to a cotton farmer and a schoolteacher, Thomas Clark received his primary education in a neighborhood school to the third grade . After that he made it only to the seventh grade at his mother's school. He dropped out of school to work at a sawmill and as many southern boys did in those days, helped out on the family farm. At sixteen, he took a job on a dredge boat that scoured the bed of the Pearl River. His mother urged him to get back in school. From an interview, Clark recalls:

"I left the boat in September 1920. Without a job. Without a future, really. I accidentally met a boy who told me about an agricultural high school Choctaw County Agricultural High School. I went down and within 10 minutes of getting off the train I'd registered. The old superintendent didn't ask me one thing about my education. He didn't know if I could read or write. Said you look like a big stout boy. You look like you'd make a good football player. So I was admitted as a football player. I went to that school for four years [and obtained] reasonably basic preparation."

University of Mississippi

Clark had decided that farming, manual labor and river work were not going to meet his needs. At the urging of his parents, he entered the University of Mississippi in September 1925. While there, he met his first mentor, historian Charles S. Sydnor, who held a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Even though Clark had no classes under Sydnor, the two had "deep conversations" about the rich heritage of the old South. Sydnor encouraged Clark to follow his interests into post graduate studies in the field of History.

It was at Ole Miss that Clark discovered the significance of his birthday and understood for the first time what Bastille Day was about. Clark "fell in love with learning" at that time, improved his use of the English language and began to develop writing and study habits that framed the disciplines through which he was to accomplish great things later in his life.

Clark had financed his education at Ole Miss with a cotton crop on land his father had given him but before he graduated the funds had all but run out. He then found a golf course that needed tending and took the job. It turned out that budding writer, William Faulkner, also having a hard time with finances, helped Clark tend the golf course. Clark was later quite surprised to see that Faulkner had "hit the bigtime" with his writing. He graduated with honors earning a BA in 1928.

University of Kentucky

Clark, through his new-found interest in history had begun attending meetings of the American Historical Association (AHA). It was there that Clark claims to have been exposed to the profession of the historian through two major personalities he saw at the AHA meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana (December 1928):

Ulrich Phillips - with Slavery: The Central Theme of Southern History
James Breasted - with The New Crusade,

Upon hearing the presentations Clark recalls, " I came home thoroughly convinced I wanted to be a historian."

Receiving scholarships to both the University of Cincinnati and to the University of Kentucky, he chose the latter. Clark went on to receive his Master's degree in history but when he would go further, the financial dilemma struck again. At the last minute, he was offered a fellowship at Duke.

Duke University

From David Hamilton's Conversation with Historian Thomas D. Clark:

Hamilton: You took a doctorate at Duke. I understand your initial train ride to Durham was an eventful one?

Clark: Yes, a historic moment. I took the old southern train from Meridian, Mississippi. Rode it up to Atlanta and Spartanburg and up to Gastonia. And there was a tremendous mob of people around the station [at Gastonia]. The train was stopped. We sat, as I recall, almost an hour. That was the strike. That was the beginning of the breaking of the old feudal system of textile labor relations. That was an historic moment in the South. And I was there. Right in the middle of it without knowing what it was all about.

That December the AHA met in Durham and I went. Duke used its graduate students as guides and so forth. I took E. Merton Coulter of Georgia, John Oliver of Pittsburg, and Professor Lynch of Indiana out to see the new campus rising out of the ground and they became lifelong friends of mine. I heard James Harvey Robinson deliver his presidential address ["The Newer Ways of Historians," American Historical Association 35 (January 1930)]. I came up close to the Association . . . [for] the second time, which had an impact on me.

At Duke, Clark centered his research on the American frontier, the development of Midwestern railroads, and slavery issues of the South. While there, he met Martha Elizabeth Turner who was to become his wife of 62 years and mother of his two children . He completed his doctorate in History in 1931. From there, it was back to the University of Kentucky, where he was to teach history by day and develop library resources by night.

Professorship at UK

Clark became a professor at the University of Kentucky in 1931. With few resources at his disposal, he almost single-handedly built Kentucky's history department into a major doctoral program in southern history. At one point its star-studded faculty included Albert D. Kirwan, Clement Eaton, James F. Hopkins, Holman Hamilton, Steven A. Channing, and Charles P. Roland. Clark began a 70-year-long enterprise at cataloging, organizing, rescuing, and preserving Kentucky's history. He established at UK a culture of respect for the heritage and documentation of the past. He re-organized the History department, bringing revolutionary innovations to the way the subject was researched and taught. His comprehensive methods were inclusive and exhaustive in scope and detail yet presented to his students in a logical and eloquent manner.

Upon receiving news that irreplaceable historical documents were being abused and defaced in Frankfort, Dr Clark rushed to the scene from Lexington. There he found that pages of military records of Kentuckians involved in the Battle of 1812 the Mexican war and the Civil War were being used as temporary sleeping cots and pipe lighters. He appealed to the newly-elected Gov. A.B. "Happy" Chandler to have the documents moved to the Lexington campus. If not for this intervention, vast portions of Kentucky's History would have been missing from the Archives that are preserved to this day. Clark's subsequent appeals to the Legislature and the Governors let to the eventual establishment of the Kentucky Archives Commission in 1957.

Dr. Thomas Clark became head of the history department in 1941 and a distinguished professor in 1950. His good natured down-to-earth style and gentle charm made him a favorite among students and fellow faculty which made it possible for him to recruit the vast amount of help needed to build and maintain the growing Kentucky archives. He labored to lead the effort toward completion and retained the workforce even after his retirement as department head in 1965 and his final retirement as professor in 1968.

Later Life

Clark remained a respected and influential advisor to various government agencies throughout his tenure at the University. He was outspoken in matters of timber and natural resource conservation, fiscal responsibility, [constitutional and education reform and especially Human Rights. He was capable and articulate in framing current policy against the lessons of history and careful to skillfully represent only primary sources whenever possible - a praxis which earned him immense respect, not only in Kentucky and the US, but around the world. His public visibility earned him a name for taking an appreciation of History to the people - not hiding in the halls of academia.

Clark fought to preserve cultural heritage for the benefit of future generations and to promote public awareness and appreciation of the same in his own day:

“ A community without a sense of History, is not a community at all. ”

Clark remained an active member of the AHA and spoke on countless occasions in many venues both academic and non-academic. He was a proponent of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1991. He lived to see the dedication and opening of the Kentucky History Center in Frankfort in April 1999. The Center was renamed after Clark in 2005 as the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History.

Clark died on June 28, 2005 at the age of 101.

Books by Thomas D. Clark

Beginning of the L&N, From New Orleans to Cairo, the Illinois Central (1933)
A Pioneer Southern Railroad from New Orleans to Cairo, (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1936)
A History of Kentucky (Prentice Hall, New York, 1937)
The Rampaging Frontier: Manners and Humors of Pioneer Days in the South and Middle West (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, Indiana,, 1939)
The Kentucky (Rivers of America Series) (Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1942)
Simon Kenton, Kentucky Scout (Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1943)
Pills, Petticoats, and Plows: The Southern Country Store (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1944)
Southern Country Editor (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1948)
The Rural Press and the New South (Baton Rouge, 1948)
The Emerging South (with A. D. Kirwan) (Oxford University Press, New York, 1961)
The South Since Appomattox (Oxford University Press, New York 1967)
Kentucky, Land of Contrast (Harper & Row, New York, 1968)
Three American Frontiers. Writings of Thomas D. Clark, (University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, 1968)
Pleasant Hill and Its Shakers, (Shakertown Press, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, 1968)
Agrarian Kentucky
Exploring Kentucky
History of Indiana University (4 volumes) (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1970)
Pleasant Hill in the Civil War (Pleasant Hill Press, 1972)
South Carolina, The Grand Tour, 1780-1865 (University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, S.C., 1973)
A Century of Banking History in the Bluegrass: The Second National Bank and Trust Company (John Bradford Press Lexington, Kentucky, 1983)
Frontiers in Conflict: The Old West, 1795-1830 (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1989)
Footloose in Jacksonian America: Robert W. Scott and His Agrarian World, (The Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Kentucky, 1989)
Clark County, Kentucky, A History, (Winchester Clark County Heritage Commission, 1995)
The People's House: Governor's Mansions of Kentucky, (with Margaret A Lane) (University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, 2002)