James Main Dixon was a Scottish teacher and author, and an important scholar of the Scots language. In addition to teaching at his alma mater, St. Andrews University, Dixon spent almost 12 years in Japan from 1880 to 1992 where he was a professor of English and a translator of Hojoki; he also taught Hidesaburo Saito, one of the first Japanese writers of English grammar. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1885. Between 1892 and 1901 Dixon taught English literature at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. From there, he relocated to Milton, Oregon, where he was president of Columbia College a year. From 1905 to 1911 Dixon taught English literature at the University of Southern California before he was transferred to the chair of Oriental studies and comparative literature. In 1906 he became the editor of West Coast Magazine.

A prolific writer on many subjects including English idioms, Scottish history and literature, Japanese relations with Latin America, poetry and philosophy, etc., the scrapbook in this small collection is comprised of his own newspaper columns and articles on these and many other subjects-- chiefly from the Los Angeles Times from about 1915 through 1923. In addition to the scrapbook, there is a typed autobioraphical manuscript called "Historical Interpretation of the Bookplate"-- including an illustration of the James Main Dixon bookplate. Other items in the collection include four small books of proverbs, part of the "People's Pocket Series" published around 1919. They include translations of proverbs (into English) from France, Ireland, Italy, and Spain.