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| J. Frank Dobie |
I was a book greenhorn when I first encountered Elijah L. Shettles (1852-1940) and J. Frank Dobie (1888-1964), two legendary Texas bookmen and personalities. My early discovery of Shettles and Dobie did much to inspire my interest in the history of book collecting and rare bookselling.
This momentous event happened while I was cataloging the Dudley R. Dobie collection of J. Frank Dobie material, the finest Dobie material to appear on the market, offered in a 1992 Dorothy Sloan catalogue. (Dudley was J. Frank Dobie’s cousin and a noted bookseller.) I discovered J. Frank Dobie’s eulogy “E. L. Shettles, Man, Bookman and Friend.” Dobie read it at Shettles’ funeral in 1940, and it was published in the January 1941 issue of the Southwest Historical Quarterly.
