From the jacket notes:

“I consider this autobiography of a coal miner a very significant document.” - George F Witcher, author and professor of English, Amherst College.

The Dark and the Damp
An Autobiography by
Jock Wilson

Avery Hopwood Major Award, 1950
With Pen Sketches by the Author

Jock Wilson, coal-digger, poet, prizefighter, Marine, has, in this tough and intelligent account of his life, written a most unusual book.

His earliest years, before he took on the dangerous existence of the miner, were filled with the excitement of a small boy’s discovery of the world’s beauties, the companionship of his dog, and fox hunting on an Indiana farm.

In Jock’s thirteenth year disaster struck the Wilson family in the form of an affliction to the eyes of Jock’s young sister. Jock had to give up his schooling, his hunting and, in a sense, his childhood, to go to work in the coal mines to help repay the loan of the money his father had borrowed for his sister’s operation.

Jock’s life was hard and rugged from that time forward. But Jock took his dreams and his ambitions with him into the mines and they helped to light the darkness and warm the damp in a way no miner’s lamp ever could. Determined to get an education, he worked at night to complete his studies, took correspondence courses to fit himself for better jobs in the mines, and never gave up his desire to write. During this time he also learned to fight, later participating in bouts for $25.00 purses.

In his writing, the first professional encouragement came from the late Harriet Monroe, who saw merit in some of his poems. With this to spur him on through the years after he left the mines and joined the Marines, he determined to complete his education and become a writer.

Here is valid proof of the fruition of youthful ideals and dreams in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles and a worthy addition to the growing shelf of authentic life in the indomitable American tradition.

Catherine Drinker Bowen, author and judge of the Avery Hopwood Awards, of which The Dark and the Damp was a Major Winner, writes: “Jock Wilson has, in fact, the writer’s eye: he forgets neither the sound nor smell nor light nor shadow once he has experienced it in connection with some felt emotion.”