The Life and Adventures of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee

"Few images of Jacksonian America capture its curiosities and contradictions so well as that of Congressman David Crockett, around 1833, fighting for control of his public image with none other than Davy Crockett, the King of the Wild Frontier. Largely responsible for this very nineteenth-century collision of myth and history was the present work, the Life and Adventures of Colonel David Crockett, of West Tennessee (1833), which was the first in a series of biographical and autobiographical books that thrust Crockett fully onto the national and international scene. Quickly retitled Sketches and Eccentricities, it was also the most outlandish of the type. Mixing two contemporary genres of storytelling-the Humor of the Old Southwest and the sketch-the work's rollicking story and canny, uneducated protagonist earned Congressman Crockett's disavowal within a year of its publication, but survived to launch a cottage industry of the Frontier hero after the latter's death at the Alamo"-- Provided by publisher.

MICHAEL A. LOFARO is professor emeritus of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the author or editor of over fifteen books, the latest of which is Boone, Black Hawk, and Crockett in 1833: Unsettling the Mythic West.