Iowa native Phil Stong (1899-1957), best known for pastoral rural novels such as State Fair (1932) and Stranger’s Return (1933), helped perpetuate the mythology of quintessentially American farm life. An experienced journalist, he also wrote nonfiction, including a comprehensive study, Horses and Americans (1939), about the role equines have played in America from colonial conquest to modern rural and urban development and equestrian sport. Lavishly illustrated with more than a hundred photographs, drawings, and prints, the book celebrates horses no less than the farms on which the animals were bred as central to American national identity. This “Author’s autograph edition […] printed on all rag paper and […] limited to five hundred copies” is from the University of Iowa Special Collections where some of Stong’s manuscripts and correspondence reside. The major collection of Stong’s papers is housed in Cowles Library at his alma mater, Drake University, in Des Moines.
In the case:
Each object in the cases is marked with a corresponding number unless otherwise noted.
21. Horses and Americans
Phil Stong, published 1939
University of Iowa Libraries, Special Collections