Longtime Texas writer Mike Cox, author of more than 40 nonfiction books, has donated his extensive Texana research files to the Texas State University’s Wittliff Collections.
Amassed over sixty years, the material consists of 1,000-plus file folders that cover numerous aspects of Texas people, places, folklore and history. The files also include notes, correspondence and research material related to Cox’s many published works.
“In 1961 my 7th grade home room teacher assigned our class compile a scrapbook related to some aspect of Texas history,” Cox said. “I decided to collect newspaper clippings, magazine articles and any other documents I could find that had to do with old Texas forts. After that, I began adding more and more material about Texas in general and kept that up.”
Cox, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 1993, first began donating his writing-related material to the Wittliff Collection in the 1990s. In addition to his correspondence and notes, his previous donations include a large collection of books and ephemera related to writer-folklorist J. Frank Dobie and the short story writer O. Henry.
“Mike is a Texana expert and a collector extraordinaire,” says Steve Davis, The Wittliff’s Literary Curator. “He began writing Texas history-related articles while still a teenager and he’s still going strong. His voluminous subject files are indeed Texas-sized and we are pleased to make them available to new generations of researchers.”
Cox’s earlier donations are already available to scholars and the general public. Archival inventories of the Cox Papers are on The Wittliff website at: https://www.thewittliffcollections.txst.edu/research/a-z/cox.html
Mike Cox has written hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, book reviews and essays in addition to his many books. He began his career as a newspaper reporter and worked in journalism for twenty years. He later served as the spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety and also worked in media relations for the Texas Department of Transportation and Texas Parks and Wildlife. He retired from the state service in 2015 and lives in the Hill Country village of Wimberley with his wife, Beverly.