Richard Walser, North Carolina's foremost chronicler of the state's literary history, was born in Lexington of Wachovia Moravian descent. His father, a North Carolina state legislator and attorney general, influenced and fed his son's interest in North Carolina literature. After a year at Davidson College, Walser transferred to the University of North Carolina, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1929. From then until 1942, he taught high school English, returning to Chapel Hill during the summers to complete his master's degree in 1933. He published his first anthology, North Carolina Poetry, in 1941.

An apocryphal story relates that at one time Richard Walser looked into doing doctoral work at Chapel Hill in North Carolina literature, and was told quite firmly that was not an acceptable subject. He was determined, despite this rejection, to pursue his interest, publishing and editing over the course of his life more than thirty books and pamphlets, including anthologies of North Carolina short fiction, humor, legends, and poetry, and Literary North Carolina, an indispensable history of North Carolina writers and writing from the days of the explorers to the 1980s. He also wrote biographical studies of Bernice Kelly Harris, Inglis Fletcher and Thomas Wolfe, among others, and is recognized as the national authority on Thomas Wolfe. A number of his works were published by the North Carolina Division of Archives and History, and continue to be revised and reissued for use by students in North Carolina schools.

As an active member of the North Carolina Library Association, North Carolina English Teachers Association, and State Literary and Historical Association, Walser was instrumental in advancing research and understanding of his native State's culture. He also helped redefine and set standards for North Carolina's literary awards. A fair and objective critic, he was not shy about stating negative opinions, although he did so gracefully and with humor, as in Nematodes in My Garden of Verse, an anthology of poetry gone wrong.

Walser taught briefly at Chapel Hill, and spent most of his career on the faculty at North Carolina State University. A popular speaker, he lectured often at other educational institutions, as well as at civic clubs and patriotic organizations. He served on numerous committees and with organizations that contributed to the improvement of many aspects of life in North Carolina, including the Watauga Club, a publicity-shunning group of state leaders who were quite influential in charting the course of North Carolina events. Richard Walser received a number of awards, but the three that meant the most to him were a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1957, the North Carolina Award for Literature in 1976, and an honorary doctorate from North Carolina State University in 1988.

Folklorists
from Literary North Carolina
North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1986

Like humor, folklore is so deeply woven into a regional literature that it is not easy to separate it from other genres, to be able to say, "This is folklore, but that is a short story." Writers of imaginative literature base their work on the customs and beliefs of those whom they have known, on the manners and ways of communities where they have lived. Lore of the folk enriches the great works of Shakespeare, of Hawthorne and Melville, of Thomas Wolfe and Paul Green. What is folklore? Arthur Palmer Hudson defines it as "that complex of knowledge which has been created by the spontaneous play of naïve imaginations upon common human experience, transmitted by word of mouth or action, and preserved without dependence upon written or printed record." Folklore comprises myths, sayings, songs, charms, anecdotes, traditions, magic, and so on. It deals with snakes, ghosts, pirates, bears, hunters, witches, and even baseball players. North Carolina is a particularly fertile region for the creation, flowering, and preservation of folklore. First of all, the state was and is geographically congenial to folklore in that, until the coming of paved roads and wireless communications, the coastal and mountain areas of the state were relatively isolated. Especially does folklore nourish wherever intrusions from the outside world are minimal. Then, too, while there is a folklore of the towns and cities, North Carolina's stable and predominantly rural population retained its mores long after they were abandoned by those people who shifted from place to place. While these conditions may apply somewhat to other regions, North Carolina's importance in folklore was firmly established by the publication of the seven- volume Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore (1952-1964), a vast and handsome repository unrivaled in any of the other forty-nine states. In it are recorded, in scholarly fashion, North Carolina games and rhymes, beliefs and customs, riddles, proverbs, speech, tales and legends, and popular superstitions. Four of the volumes provide the words and music for such notable folk ballads and folk songs as "Naomi Wise," "Frankie Silver," "Tom Dula," and "Nellie Cropsey."

Bernice Kelly Harris: Storyteller of Eastern North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Library, 1955.

The Black Poet: Being the Remarkable Story ... of George Moses Horton. New York: Philosophical Library, 1966.

The Enigma of Thomas Wolfe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953.

Five Walsers, an Informal Account. Raleigh: Wolf's Head Press, 1976.

Gateway to North Carolina Folklore. With Leonidas Betts. Raleigh: North Carolina State University, 1952.

Inglis Fletcher of Bandon Plantation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Library, 1952.

Jeremiah Aderton and Some of His Descendants. Raleigh: Wolf's Head Press, 1979.

Literary North Carolina. Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1970.

Literary North Carolina (revised and enlarged), assisted by E.T. Malone, Jr. Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1986.

Nematodes in My Garden of Verse: A Little Book of Tar Heel Poems, editor. Winston-Salem: J.F. Blair, 1959.

North Carolina Drama, editor. Richmond: Garrett & Massie, 1956.

North Carolina in the Short Story, editor. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1948.

North Carolina Legends. Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1980.

North Carolina Miscellany. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962.

North Carolina Parade: Stories of History and People. With Julia Montgomery Street. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1966.

North Carolina Poetry, editor. Richmond: Garrett and Massie, 1941.

Picturebook of Tar Heel Authors. Raleigh: State Department of Archives and History, 1960. 1957.

Poets of North Carolina, editor. Richmond: Garrett and Massie, 1941.

Short Stories from the Old North State. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959.

Tar Heel Laughter, editor. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974.

Thomas Wolfe: An Introduction and Interpretation. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1961.

Thomas Wolfe Interviewed, 1929-1938. Edited with Aldo P. Magi. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.

Thomas Wolfe, Undergraduate. Durham: Duke University Press, 1977.

The Watauga Club. Raleigh: Wolf's Head Press, 1980.

Wolfe and Belinda Jelliffe. With Aldo P. Magi. N.p.: Thomas Wolfe Society, 1987.

The Wolfe Family in Raleigh. Raleigh: Wolf's Head Press, 1976.

Appearances in periodicals including:
American Literature, American Speech, Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Carolina Comments, Carolina Quarterly, Early American Literature, Eigo Seinen: The Rising Generation, High School Journal, Journal of American Folklore, Modern Fiction Studies, Modern Language Notes, North Carolina Historical Review, Pembroke Magazine, South Atlantic Quarterly, State, and Windhover.

Additional information on Mr. Walser can be found in:

Tributes to Richard Walser in Pembroke Magazine, No. 20, 1988.

Links to further information:

Richard Walser's Papers at UNC