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Kephart was a polyglot who studied languages throughout his life (Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, Finnish, Cherokee).

At Yale University where he secured his first professional position as an academic librarian, he strengthened his interest in frontier history. Kephart’s scholarly career began as a graduate student in History and Political Sciences at Cornell University (1881-1884) the following year he lived in Europe, working for his former professor. This presentation will provide a brief biographical summary and focus on Kephart's civic engagement in Bryson City and Asheville during the 1920’s. The highway marker leading into Bryson City, NC, memorializes Kephart as a scholar, author, and outdoorsman. We believe that this panel’s exploration of Kephart’s entire writing corpus will offer a re-introduction to a complex and prolific writer. The publication of Kephart’s novel Smoky Mountain Magic, along with other works of fiction published in magazines throughout his career, provides another perspective on Horace Kephart’s writing career. Finally, Mae Miller Claxton will consider Kephart the fiction writer. Panelists include Janet McCue, co-author of the upcoming Kephart biography, who considers Kephart’s role as engaged citizen Andrew Denson, who discusses Kephart’s writings about the Cherokees George Frizzell, who considers Kephart’s quest for a frontier “back of beyond” and the Appalachia that he actually encountered, a region already experiencing changes that would intensify in coming decades. This panel introduces new readings of Kephart based on writings that have long languished in archives. Few, however, have read beyond these two texts. Most readers are familiar with his best-known works: Our Southern Highlanders(1913 expanded edition 1922), Kephart’s chronicle of southern Appalachia and its people, and Camping and Woodcraft(1916, 1917), a classic of outdoor literature.

And his writing career continued until his untimely death in a car accident in 1931. In fact, Kephart began writing outdoor literature long before he left his job as head librarian at the St.

For readers interested in Appalachian culture and history, Horace Kephart has attained a kind of mythical status as the outsider who came to western North Carolina in 1904 to chronicle a world “back of beyond” and never left.