Bluebonnets and tumbleweeds, gunslingers and cattle barons all 
form part of the romanticized lore of the state of Texas. In this
historiography of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century chronologies
of the state, Laura Lyons McLemore traces the roots of the
enduring Texas myths and tries to understand both the purposes
and the methods of early historians.

    Two central findings emerge: first, what is generally referred
to as the Texas myth was a reality to earlier historians, and
second, myth has always been an integral part of Texas history.
Myth provided the impetus for some of the earliest European
interest in the land that became Texas, so it is perhaps natural
that it entered historians' perceptions as well. McLemore's survey
of early Texas historians reveals that they were by and large
painstaking and discriminating researchers, from all walks of life,
whose legacy includes documentary sources that can no longer
be found elsewhere.

   Inventing Texas illuminates the intricate blend of nostalgia 
and narrative that created the state's most enduring iconography.

_________________________________________________________

LAURA LYONS McLEMORE is the college archivist and curator of 
Special Collections at Austin College in Sherman, Texas.


Number Ninety-six: Centennial Series of the Association of 
Former Students, Texas A&M University


What people are saying about this book

". . . a unique study in Texas historiography that should
find a ready interest among Texas scholars."—David G.
McComb, author, Texas, A Modern History