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In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown

In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown by Amy Gary is life story of the talented woman who created the classic children’s books Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny. Though Margaret Wise Brown was only forty-two when she died unexpectedly, around one hundred books she wrote were published in her lifetime, and dozens more manuscripts were found after her death.

Margaret was not only a prolific writer, but an influential editor who helped usher in the golden age of children’s books in the mid-twentieth century. Imaginative, adventurous, and bold, she was a publishing legend most of us know little about and whose legacy shouldn’t be forgotten. This biography illuminates her fascinating life story.

Description of In the Great Green Room from the Flatiron Books edition, © 2016: The extraordinary life of the woman behind the beloved children’s classic Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny comes alive in this fascinating biography of Margaret Wise Brown. Margaret’s books have sold millions of copies all over the world, but few people know that she was at the center of a children’s book publishing revolution. Her whimsy and imagination fueled a steady stream of stories, songs, an poems, and she was renowned for her prolific writing an business savvy, as well as her stunning beauty and endless thirst for adventure.

Margaret started her writing career by helping to shape the curious for the Bank Street School for Children, making it her mission to create stories that would rise above traditional fairy tales and allowed girls to see themselves as equals to boys. At the same time, she also experimented endlessly with her own writing. Margaret would spend days researching subjects, picking daisies, gazing at clouds, and observing nature, all in an effort to precisely capture a child’s sense of awe and wonder as he or she discovered the world.

In the Great Green Room by Amy Gary on Amazon

Clever, quirky, and incredibly talented, Margaret embraced life with passion, lived extravagantly off  her royalties, went on rabbit hunts, and carried on long and troubled love affairs with both men and women.

Among them were the two great loves in Margaret’s life, one of whom was a gender-bending poet and ex-wife of John Barrymore. She went by the stage name Michael Strange, and she and Margaret had a tempestuous yet secret relationship. At one point they lived next door to one another so they could be together.

After the dissolution of their relationship and Michael’s death, Margaret became engaged to a younger man who happened to be the son of a Rockefeller and a Carnegie. But before they could marry Margaret died unexpectedly at the age of forty-two, leaving behind a cache of unpublished work and a timeless collection of books that would fo on to become classics in children’s literature.

Author Amy Gary captures the eccentric and exceptional life of Margaret Wise Brown and, drawing on newly discovered personal letters and diaries, reveals an intimate portrait to a creative genius whose unrivaled talent breathed new life into the literary world.

About Amy Gary

In 1990, Amy Gary discovered hundreds of unpublished works by Margaret Wise Brown in Margaret’s sister’s attic. Since then, Gary has catalogued, elite, and researched all of Brown’s writings. She has been covered in Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, and on NPR, among other media outlets. She was formerly the director of publishing at Lucasfilm and headed the publishing department at Pixar Studios. Visit her on the web AmyGary.com.

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Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (January 21, 1882 – March 28, 1941), born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London, epitomized rare literary genius. Despite debilitating battles with mental breakdowns, Woolf produced a body of work considered among the most groundbreaking in twentieth century literature. Her father was a literary critic, and her mother a renowned beauty and artists’ model. Her mother’s sudden death when she was 13 may have been the catalyst for the first of her recurrent nervous breakdowns.

As a young woman, Woolf developed her writer’s voice with a number of literary pursuits. She reviewed books for the Times Literary Supplement, wrote scores of articles and essays, and for a short time, taught English and history at Morley College in London (she herself had never earned a degree).

She wrote criticism and essays while her literary reputation modestly and steadily increased. Woolf started her first novel, originally titled Melymbrosia, in 1907. After seven and a half years of toil, it was finally published as The Voyage Out in 1915. 

Prolific and experimental

Virginia Woolf was determined to create a new form of literature that was more internal, a savoring of experience, and a departure from traditional storytelling. Yet she was never confident. She constantly second-guessed herself, her diary filled with lines like this one from a 1919 entry:  “Is the time coming when I can endure to read my own writing in print without blushing— shivering and wishing to take cover?” Upon completing works, she was most always dissatisfied.

And yet, she went on. Night and Day was published in 1919, followed by Jacob’s Room (1922). The latter was a stream of consciousness novel that, according to the Penguin Companion to English Literature, “makes no attempt to preserve the outlines of chronological events, but breaks down experience into a series of rapidly dissolving impressions that merge yet are never drowned in formlessness.”

Mrs. Dalloway (1925), perhaps one of her best-known works, takes place in one day of the main character’s life,  fleshing it out in flashbacks taking place within her consciousness. In To the Lighthouse (1927), Woolf explores the concept of time and change as it relates to personality. Orlando (1928) takes the main character through several lifetimes, changing genders as he/she moves through time. Woolf’s friend and love interest Vita Sackville-West was acknowledged to be the inspiration for the character of Orlando.

The Waves (1931) is arguably the most stylized of her novels, and with The Years (1937), Woolf adopts a more traditional, less internal structure.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf:  Gender and Sexuality Through Time

Hogarth Press

With her husband Leonard Woolf, she founded Hogarth Press. It started as a hobby, to print fine small editions of literary works. The press gradually grew to accommodate some notable authors from their Bloomsbury circle and beyond, and enjoyed some bestseller successes, notably, the novels of Vita Sackville-West. Some of Virginia Woolf’s novels were published by the press once it gained prestige—a case of publishing close to the vest, rather than self-publishing. She also acted as editor and sometimes marketer for the press, much to her chagrin.

Virginia Woolf wants you to write “for the good of the world”

Struggles with mental illness

It’s now widely believed that she suffered from bipolar disorder. There were scant options for treatment at this time, and so, during particularly bad bouts of mania or depression, she withdrew, unable to participate in her active social life, and found it nearly impossible, to focus on writing.

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Manic Depression and the Life of Virginia Woolf, author and psychiatrist Peter Dally writes: “Virginia’s need to write was, among other things, to make sense out of mental chaos and gain control of madness. Through her novels she made her inner world less frightening. Writing was often agony but it provided the ‘strongest pleasure’ she knew.” Dally discerned a pattern by which Woolf appeared excited yet stable when starting a new book; then, when shaping and revising, her mood gave way to exhaustion and depression.

She referred to herself as “mad,” experiencing hallucinatory voices and visions that hinted at mental illness even above and beyond the cyclical manias and depressions. “My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery—always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud,” she wrote in a 1932 letter. “And why? What’s this passion for?”

It was also later learned that she had endured sexual abuse at the hands of her step-brothers. More of this is detailed in Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work by Louise DeSalvo.

Leonard Woolf and the Bloomsbury Circle

Virginia was nurtured by husband Leonard Woolf and beloved by her Bloomsbury colleagues. What has come to be known as the Bloomsbury Circle was a group of British colleagues that included writers, artists, critics, and intellectuals. In addition to herself and her husband, other members included her sister, Vanessa Bell, an artist, Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forester, and others.

Leonard Woolf was ever vigilant of his wife’s mental state; he cared for and protected her as best as anyone could. This was clearly a marriage of minds, if not a typical union, and there’s little doubt that he helped create the best possible scenario for her thrive and produce, under the circumstances.

Insight into the writer’s mind

Woolf left much insight into the writer’s mind as a diarist and essayist, along with her numerous books of fiction and nonfiction. She encouraged women to write about whatever fascinated them, and to dare to be dreamers and creators, as encapsulated in A Room of One’s Own, one of her best-known works of nonfiction.

Some time after his wife’s death, Leonard Woolf edited her diaries, which offer one of the most intimate glimpses available of the creative process at its finest, despite soaring highs and crashing lows. An edited version of the five-volume diaries, A Writer’s Diary, can serve as a bedside companion to anyone who wishes to witness the unfolding of genius. Eudora Welty was but one writer who felt her influence: “ Any day you open it to will be tragic, and yet all the marvelous things she says about her work, about working, leave you filled with joy that’s stronger than your misery for her. Remember— ‘I’m not very far along, but I think I have my statues against the sky’? Isn’t that beautiful?”

Virginia Woolf page on Amazon

Death by suicide

As is well known, Virginia Woolf’s inner demons got the best of her. She walked into the river Ouse with stones in her pockets and succumbed to suicide by drowning in 1941, at the age of 59.

More about Virginia Woolf on this site

  Virginia Woolf wants you to write “For the good of the world.”
  Virginia Woolf — the most self-critical author of all time?
Virginia Woolf’s 1941 suicide note
Quotes on Living and Writing

Major Works

The Voyage Out   (1915)
Night and Day (1919)
The Years
Jacob’s Room
The Waves
To the Lighthouse
Mrs. Dalloway
Orlando
A Room of One’s Own  

Autobiographies and Biographies about Virginia Woolf

Moments of Being
A Writer’s Diary
Virginia Woolf: A Biography   by Quentin Bell
Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life   by Dr. Julia Briggs
Virginia Woolf   by Alexandra Harris
Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse

on Her Life and Work   by Louise DeSalvo

More Information

Wikipedia
Reader discussions of Woolf’s books on Goodreads

Selected film adaptations of Virginia Woolf’s works

Orlando  (1993)
Mrs. Dalloway  (1998)

Visit

Monk’s House – Lewes, Sussex, UK

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Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson (1790)

Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson (1762 – 1824, sometimes known as Susanna Haswell Rowson) was the best-known work by this American-British author. It was also America’s first best-selling novel. First published in England in 1790 as Charlotte: a Tale of Truth, it was retitled Charlotte Temple in 1797. With its classic theme of seduction and remorse, it sparked a great deal of controversy in its time. Yet it remained the most widely read novels of the first half of the nineteenth century.

Other than Charlotte Temple, Susanna Rowson’s prolific body of writings (which also included other novels as well as plays, poems, and school textbooks) has been largely forgotten. Though contemporary readers give this novel mixed reviews, judging from comments on Goodreads, Charlotte Temple has endured as an example of early American literature.

For all the novel’s faults, the following mid-twentieth re-evaluation might just tempt today’s readers to give it a try.

A 20th-century look at an 18th-century novel

From the original review in the Columbus (IN) Herald, June 6, 1958: Susanna Rowson, who wrote Charlotte Temple, had a far more romantic life story than her heroine. She was the daughter of William Haswell, an officer of the British navy. When she was eight years old she went with him to America. Their ship had wrecked off Lowell’s Island in Massachusetts. There they lived until the start of the Revolutionary War when a patriotic call of duty recalled Lieutenant Haswell to England.

Susanna was married in London in 1786 to William Rowson. In 1793 — three years after Charlotte Temple was published — she and her husband sailed to America, but the rumor that our streets were paved with gold did not prove true. William Rowson went bankrupt, after which his wife made the family living as an actress.

Susanna Rowson on the true story behind the novel

After three years of acting on the American stage, Susanna found that school teaching an writing plays and novels were more profitable and less strenuous than acting. From the amount of writing she did, she must have been an exceedingly busy woman. She herself had this to say about her most popular book:

“This is a true story. The heroine’s real name was Stanley and she was the granddaughter of the Earl of Derby. Her betrayer was Colonel John Montressor of the English Army, a relative of the author’s. Charlotte’s grave is in Trinity Churchyard, New York, but a few feet from Broadway.

Charlotte’s daughter is said to have been adopted by a rich man and afterward to to have met the son of her father, unconscious of the relationship, and to have fallen in love with him. Her identity was discovered through a miniature of the girl’s mother, the unfortunate Charlotte, to whom she herself bore a striking resemblance.”

Learn more about Susanna Rowson

The plot of Charlotte Temple

The story is about the betrayal of an innocent maiden. Charlotte, at age fifteen, is a student in an English bearing school when her friendship with her French teacher, Mlle. La Rue, leads her to secret meetings with two British officers who are about to set sail for America to take part in the Revolutionary War.

The night before she is to be allowed to go home to her family — her father is the younger son of an earl — for the celebration of her birthday, she is persuaded to go with the officer with whom she has fallen in love. He promises to marry her when they get to America.

This promise, of course, is not kept. The officer conveniently falls in love with a girl with far more money than poor Charlotte has. And though he makes arrangements for her care and protection, the man through whom these arrangements are made proves false.

Charlotte is made to suffer and pay over an over for her unhappy adventure. In the end, when her family has learned of her whereabouts and her father is hurrying to save her, she gives birth to a baby girl and dies of malnutrition.

Charlotte Temple on Amazon

Full of heavy moralizing

The plot was undoubtedly threadworn even in its day, but few writers have told it with so much suspense. Literary fashions of the late 18th century abound in the book. The ladies are forever fainting at the hint of bad news, or are thrown into hysterias. They never walk in the streets alone, but nearly always in the company of their husbands or some male relative, and they are always “hanging on his arm.”

Charlotte Temple is full of heavy moralizing, especially when concerns with seduction. The moralizing seems to take the place of the heavily sensuous background descriptions that usually soften the modern novelist’s fictional seductions. For instance:

Great heavens! when I think of the miseries that must run the heart of a doting parent when he sees his darling at first seduce from his protection, and afterwards abandoned by the very wretch whose promises of love decoyed her from her paternal roof — when he sees her, poor and wretched, her bosom torn between remorse and crime, and love for her vile betrayer …

     Oh, my dear girls, for such only am I writing listen not to the voice of love, unsanctioned by paternal approbation; be assured it is now past days of romance. No woman can be run away with contrary to her own inclination; then kneel own each morning and request high heaven to keep you free from temptation. Or, should it please to suffer you to be tried, pray for fortitude to resist the impulse of inclination when it runs counter to the precepts of religion and virtue.

Trying to resist the seducer

At first, Charlotte virtuously determines never again to see Montraville, her seducer, again. And then must see him again, in order to tell him that she will not see him:

Montraville was tender, ardent, and yet respectful, we are told, and we wonder just how he managed to be so:

“Shall I not see you once more,” he said, “before I leave England? Will you not bless me by an assurance that when we are divided by a vast expanse of sea, I shall not be forgotten?”

     Charlotte sighed.

“Why that sigh, my dear Charlotte? Could I flatter myself that a fear for my safety or a wish for my welfare occasioned it, how happy it would make me.”

     “I shall ever wish you well, Montraville, but we must meet no more.”

“Oh, say not so, my lovely girl; reflect that when I leave my native land, perhaps a few short weeks may terminate my existence; the perils of the oceans — the dangers of war —”

     “I can hear no more,” said Charlotte, in a tremulous voice. “I must leave you.”

     “Say you will see me once again.”

     “I dare not,” said she.

     “Only for one half hour tomorrow. It is my last request and I shall never trouble you again.”

     “I know not what to say,” cried Charlotte, struggling to draw her hands from him. “Let me leave you now.”

     “And will you come tomorrow?”

     “Perhaps I may,” said she.

Not an example of “sin and succeed”

But do not think this is any of your “sin and succeed” literature. Poor Charlotte, through her misplaced fidelity, is first neglected and then driven into the streets, with no one to befriend her. While on the other hand, the completely amoral Mlle. La Rue deliberately breaks with Montraville’s companion, and by the time they arrive in America, she has found herself a rich an respectable husband.

This hardly seems poetic justice, but on the very last page of the book, in very small print, all is made right:

It was said that ten years after these sad events that Mr. and Mrs. Temple were obliged to go to London on particular business and brought their little Lucy with them. They had been walking one morning when on their return they found a poor wretch sitting on the steps at the door. She attempted to arise as they approached, but from extreme weakness was unable, and after several fruitless efforts, fell back in a fit.

     But she recovered enough to tell her story it was the former Mlle. La Rue, no longer the rich and powerful Mrs. Crayton — who had refused Charlotte help in her worst troubles — but an outcast, bent on confessing her sins:

     “Come near me, Madame, I shall not contaminate you,” she tells Mrs. Temple. “I am the viper that stung your peach. I am she who turned poor Charlotte out to perish in the street.”

     Looking at Lucy, she went on, “I see her now, such was the fair bud of innocence that my vile arts blasted ere it was half blown.”

     The Temples, being noble-hearted people, give her food and wine, and Mrs. Temple gets her into a hospital where she soon dies, “a striking example that vice, however prosperous, in the end leads only to misery and shame.”

And there the book ends. Though we may smile at its overwrought style and hackneyed characters, it is true that today’s reader might find that once they’ve start reading, it’s a hard story to put it down.

More about Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson

Charlotte Temple on Librivox
Charlotte Temple on Project Gutenberg
Text of Charlotte Temple and Study Guide
Reader discussion of Charlotte Temple on Goodreads

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Susanna Rowson

Susanna Rowson (n.d., c. 1762 – March 2, 1824) was an American-British author and actress, best known for Charlotte Temple, America’s first bestselling novel. She was born in Portsmouth, England, the only daughter of British Navy Lieutenant William Haswell and Susanna Musgrave Haswell, who died within days of giving birth to her. While stationed in Boston, her father met his second wife, with whom he had three sons. After being appointed a Boston customs officer, the family settled nearby.

The lawyer and statesman James Otis, a family friend, took a great deal of interest in Susanna’s education. From an early age, she adored books and was a precocious reader, devouring Dryden, Pope, Shakespeare, and Spenser. Otis called her his little scholar and instructed her in democratic principles.

The start of a literary career in England

During the American war of independence, the property belonging to Susanna’s father was confiscated, and for some time the family lived under house arrest. In 1778, they all returned to England, their means having been greatly reduced. Susanna worked as a governess until 1786, when she married William Rowson, a hardware merchant who not only came from a theatrical family but who also worked as a trumpeter in the royal horse guards. From all accounts, it appears that the couple had no children.

In that same year, 1786, Susanna, now known as Mrs. Rowson, published Victoria, a tale in two volumes. In 1788, she published The Inquisitor, or Invisible Rambler, a novel in three volumes. It was later reissued in Philadelphia in 1794.

Charlotte Temple

Susanna’s best-known book was the novel Charlotte: a Tale of Truth. Published in London in 1790, it was quite successful, with twenty-five thousand copies sold in a few years. It was republished in Philadelphia, Concord, and New York.

Retitled Charlotte Temple in 1797, it’s considered the first American bestseller — in fact, the bestselling American novel until Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) replaced it with that distinction. With its classic theme of seduction and remorse, it sparked a great deal of controversy in its time.

Books by and about Susanna Rowson on Amazon

Stepping on to the stage

Soon after the publication of Charlotte Temple, William Rowson went bankrupt. Despite the success of her literary work, Susanna began working as a stage actress as an additional means of livelihood. From 1792 to 1793, she, her husband, and her husband’s sister performed in  Edinburgh.

In 1793 Susanna and her husband immigrated to the United States, and she continued to act until 1797. She performed in Annapolis, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. It was in Boston that she put this phase of her career to an end, performing in a well-received comedy she herself wrote —  Americans in England.

New endeavors

After leaving the stage, Susanna opened The Young Ladies’ Academy, a school for girls in Boston, and returned to writing in different forms. From 1802 to 1805 she edited Boston Weekly Magazine and contributed to a number of other periodicals.

She also wrote many school textbooks, including A Spelling Dictionary (1807). Her school proved successful, and she ran in until 1822, when her health began to fail, forcing her to retire from her multi-faceted work life.

Death and legacy

Susanna Rowson died on March 2, 1824, in Boston, survived by her husband. Other than Charlotte Temple, her literary canon has not been enduring. And modern readers are far more mixed about it, judging from comments on Goodreads, than readers of its time. Though she was the author of America’s first best-selling novel, Susanna Rowson has been all but forgotten. In the 1870 A Memoir of Mrs. Susanna Rowson, its author wrote:

“Mrs. Susanna Rowson was one of the most remarkable women of her day. Her life is as romantic as any creation of her gifted pen and is a beautiful illustration of the potency of a large, glowing heart, and a determined will to rise superior to circumstances and achieve success.”

As a woman who used her literary and theatrical talent to make a living when working women were frowned upon, she deserves a great deal of respect. And though her literary style might not resonate with contemporary readers, a second look might just be in order.

Major works

Novels

Victoria (1786)
The Inquisitor (1788)
Charlotte Temple (1790)
Mentoria, or the Young Ladies’ Friend (1791, 1794)
Rebecca, or the Fille de Chambre (1792; an autobiographical novel)
Trials of the Human Heart (1795)
Reuben and Rachel, or Tales of Old Times (1798)
Sarah, or the Exemplary Wife (1802)
Charlotte’s Daughter, or the Three Orphans (1828; posthumous)

Plays and operas

The Slaves in Algiers (1794 – an opera)
The Female Patriot (1794)
The Volunteers (1795)
Americans in England (1796; later retitled Columbian Daughters)
The American Tar (1796)
Hearts of Oak (1811)

Poetry

Poems on Various Subjects (1788)
The Standard of Liberty (1795)
Miscellaneous Poems (1811)

Biographies

A Memoir of Mrs. Susanna Rowson by Elias Nason  (1870)

Read and listen online

Charlotte Temple on Librivox
Charlotte Temple on Project Gutenberg

More information

Wikipedia
Text of Charlotte Temple and Study Guide
Wikisource
Britannica
Reader discussion of Charlotte Temple on Goodreads

Research

Papers of Susanna Rowson

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How Betty MacDonald’s Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Came to the Page

Betty MacDonald (1908 – 1958) was an American author of humorous semi-autobiographical stories and children’s books. The Egg and I, her bestselling 1942 memoir of running a chicken farm in rural Washington State in the late 1920s, catapulted her to international fame. Her Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books for children were also hugely successful. From Paula Becker’s 2016 biography, Looking for Betty MacDonald: The Egg, the Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I, here’s the story of how Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle came to the page and became a series:

As sales of The Egg and I soared, Lippincott eagerly sought to capitalize on Betty’s success. Accordingly, fifteen months after Egg made its debut, the publisher introduced Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. The book was a collection of children’s stories about a wise, kind, magical woman who gently but firmly assisted errant children and their beleaguered parents. Betty dedicated Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle to her daughters, nieces, and nephews, “who are perfect angels and couldn’t possibly have been the inspiration for any of these stories.”

A slew of rejections, and a reversal

Lippincott nearly missed staking its claim in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s publishing empire. While Betty was revising Egg, she had sent the children’s manuscript to her literary agent, Bernice Baumgarten, and Baumgarten had struggled without success to place it. The children’s book editors who read the stories didn’t understand Betty’s mixture of naturalism and fantasy. The publishers Bobbs-Merrill, Farrar & Rinehart, McBride’s, Messner, and Lippincott all turned the manuscript down. Once Egg began to rocket up the best-seller lists, Lippincott frantically reversed their rejection, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle was rushed into print.

A well-timed appearance

As with The Egg and I, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s appearance was well timed. Children’s book sales had risen sharply during World War II, partly because toys were unavailable or in short supply, their materials being needed for wartime production. The War Production Board restrictions that affected the publishing industry most severely had been lifted by the time Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle launched. Paper and cloth were in readier supply, and children still had a keen appetite for books.

Betty’s youthful storytelling, begun at the insistent prompting of Mary’s icy feet, continued when she was a teenager spinning tales to occupy Dede and Alison. When she had children of her own, making up stories was her natural reflex, and she invented Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle for Anne and Joan.

“I have told Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories to children, hundreds of them, from two to twelve. Children like them because they think they are written about a sister, brother, friends, cousins, anyone but them,” Betty wrote to Lippincott’s Mac McKaughan. “I’m sure that one reason I have always loved to tell stories to children is because they are such enthusiastic audiences—they laugh loudly at anything the least bit witty, are terribly sad in the sad parts and grind their teeth with hatred for the wicked characters.”

 

Looking for Betty MacDonald: The Egg, the Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I

is available on Amazon and the University of Washington Press

The magic of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle

Unlike book editors, children had no trouble whatsoever accepting Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle or her world. “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle has brown sparkly eyes and brown hair which she keeps very long, almost to her knees, so the children can comb it. . . . [Her] skin is a goldy brown and she has a warm, spicy, sugar-cookie smell that is very comforting to children who are sad about something. . . . [S]he wears felt hats which the children poke and twist into witches’ and pirates’ hats and she does not mind at all. . . . [S]he wears very high heels all the time and is glad to let the little girls borrow her shoes,” the book explained.

Among the many attractions of the book were the late Mr. Piggle-Wiggle’s hidden pirate’s treasure; the pets, Wag and Lightfoot (whose offspring were periodically divvied up among the neighborhood children); and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s willingness to allow little boys and girls to use her house as a cozy club while they baked cookies and enjoyed cambric tea.

The role of children in the author’s life

Betty’s newspaper interviews frequently mentioned the important role that children played in her busy life. She told the Seattle Times that Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, like The Egg and I, was written while her house “crawled with children. . . . I had so much help that I almost never got it finished. Most of my best writing has been done to the accompaniment of heavy breathing, sniffing, and fat hands poking the wrong key of the typewriter.

“I hope this book sells. If it doesn’t, it will prove that all these years I’ve been boring children instead of amusing them.” It did sell, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle was to become one of Betty MacDonald’s most enduring creations, appearing in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Magic (1949), Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Farm (1954), and Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (1957).

The wisdom of good behavior

Like Uncle Remus, Mary Poppins, and Nurse Matilda, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is an adult who helps children to learn the wisdom of good behavior. She believes that misguided children truly want to behave well once their veil of ignorance is stripped away. Children liked the books’ honestly depicted child characters and guileless acceptance of everyday magic.

Parents appreciated Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s breezy ways of presenting moral lessons and her effective solutions for behavior that was worrisome, trying, or just plain naughty. The Piggle-Wiggle books make both children and parents feel they are “in” on something. Children recognize behaviors that they themselves would never, ever exhibit (wink, wink), and feel superior, even as they identify with the child characters. Betty tosses inside jokes about parental behavior to the adults reading the books aloud. 

Unlike many books written in the same era, the Piggle-Wiggle books represent boys and girls equally: both are endowed with characteristics that worry or annoy their parents, and both are equally amenable to Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s peculiar training methods.

Excerpt by Paula Becker, from Looking for Betty MacDonald: The Egg, the Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I, pp. 81-83. © 2016. Reprinted with permission of the University of Washington Press.

Visit Paula Becker on the web to learn more.

You might also like: The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald

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8 Literary Love Affairs and Marriages

What do you get when complex, brilliant writers come together in a relationship? From the scenarios of such writers that follow, what results is both a lot of passion and almost certain complication. Some of these couples agreed on non-monogamy, while others suffered from it; some agreed that marriage wasn’t to be part of the bargain, others disdained it.

Of those listed below, only the Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning union seemed like pure bliss — though even in that case, there was a complication — her father was so dead-set against the marriage that he disinherited his daughter. Read on for a capsule of 8 famed literary love affairs and marriages — truly, for better or worse.

Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett

Lillian Hellman, the legendary American playwright, was romantically involved with Dashiell Hammett for thirty years, starting in the 1920s. Though Hammett had been married before they met, and had two daughters, neither he nor Hellman were interested in marriage or monogamy in their relationship. Hammett, a hard-drinking former detective, was best known for the detective novels, notably The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon. One of Hellman’s impressions of Hammett from their early days:

“The white hair, the white pants, the white shirt made a straight, flat surface in the late sun. I thought: Maybe that’s the handsomest sight I ever saw, that line of a man, the knife for a nose, and the sheet went out of my hand and the wind went out of the sail …”

The couple’s relationship was on-again, off-again. When Dashiell Hammett’s lung cancer started to get the best of him in 1956, Hellman installed a bed on the library floor of her Manhattan brownstone and took care of him until his death in 1961. For more about their relationship, see When Lilly Met Dash.

Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre

 

Even before they’d met, Simone de Beauvoir, best known for her classic feminist text The Second Sex, was desperate to be accepted into Jean-Paul Sartre’s intellectual circle, which also included Albert Camus and Maurice Merleau-Ponty were part of this world.

Impressed by her intellect, Sartre asked to be introduced to her. Soon, they became a couple and embarked on an open relationship. While they never married, they remained together for over 50 years, connected by their intense intellectual bond. “We have pioneered our own relationship — its freedom, intimacy, and frankness,” as Simone de Beauvoir described it. 

As a New Yorker article described their relationship: “They were famous as a couple with independent lives, who met in cafés, where they wrote their books and saw their friends at separate tables, and were free to enjoy other relationships, but who maintained a kind of soul marriage.”

Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway

Martha Gellhorn wrote in a variety of genres, including novels and works of nonfiction, but she became best known as a war correspondent who covered global conflicts for some 60 years. Her relationship with Ernest Hemingway began in the mid-1930s, when they traveled together to cover the Spanish Civil War. 

She and Hemingway married in 1940, after his contentious split with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer. Hemingway soon became resentful of Gellhorn’s work, resenting her long journeys to cover the World War II. “Are you a war correspondent, or wife in my bed?” Apparently, she decided she was the former, especially after Hemingway tried to prevent her from going to Normandy. Notoriously restless, critical, and controlling, Hemingway had apparently met his match in Gellhorn, and he didn’t like it. They divorced in 1945. 

Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf

Vita Sackville-West had a loving marriage to diplomat Nigel Nicolson. In Portrait of a Marriage, Nigel Nicolson, one of their two sons, combined his mother’s memoir with his own commentary, Vita’s love affairs with a number of women (which resulted in much drama) and Harold’s discreet relationships with men didn’t hinder the longevity of their marriage, nor and the happiness of their family. Granted, Vita’s affairs injected a good deal of drama into the relationship, and it’s possible that her passion nearly got the best of her.

The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf documents her relationship with Virginia Woolf, which began in the mid-1920s. “I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia,” wrote Vita to Virginia in a 1926 letter.“You have broken down my defenses. And I really don’t resent it …” 

Though there is some debate over whether the two were actually lovers, their romantic liaison ended on good terms in 1929, and the two remained the closest of friends until Virginia’s death by suicide in 1941.

Anaïs Nin and Henry & June Miller

From late 1931 to the end of the following year, Anaïs Nin was swept into a passionate love triangle with the writer Henry Miller and his wife June. Drawn from her Paris journals, she describes the momentous year in which they were entangled. She fell in love with June’s beauty and Henry’s writing.

Soon after June’s departure for New York, Anaïs began a passionate affair with Miller. “What a superb game the three of us are playing,” she wrote. “Who is the demon? Who is the liar? Who is the human being? Who is the cleverest? Who the strongest? Who loves the most?” Learn more in Nin’s book about this episode in her life, Henry and June.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was seventeen when she met Percy Bysshe Shelley, the writer and poet. Her father was William Godwin, a political philosopher, and Shelley was one of his followers. Mary eloped to France with Shelley, though he was already married. Her father heartily disapproved. After Shelley’s wife committed suicide, the couple married in 1816. From then on, she used the name Mary Shelley.

In the midst of her tumultuous, tragic, and romantic youth, Mary wrote Frankenstein, one of the most memorable stories of all time. 

Her own story took even more tragic turns. She and Percy had five children in total, three of whom died before age three. In 1822, on an ocean voyage, Percy Shelley’s craft was lost at sea; his body was recovered days later. The loss was devastating. In an 1824 journal entry she wrote: “At the age of twenty-six I am in the condition of an aged person — all my old friends are gone … & my heart fails when I think by how few ties I hold to the world…”

Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning

Elizabeth Barrett met the love of her life, fellow poet Robert Browning, after he wrote her a fan letter of sorts. Her first collection, Poems (1844) was an immediate success in Europe and the U.S. and made her famous. A Drama of Exile: and Other Poems (1845) cemented her reputation.

It was that same year that the poet Robert Browning wrote to tell her how much he admired her work. A mutual acquaintance arranged for the two to meet, and so began one of the most intensely romantic and lasting love affairs in literary history.

Though their bond was perfectly proper, Elizabeth’s father disinherited her after their secret nuptials. The couple fled to Pisa, Italy, and she never reconciled with her family. The marriage, which produced one son, was a lasting success, immortalized by the famous sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning that begins:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

Sylvia Plath first met fellow poet Ted Hughes at a party in Cambridge, England in 1956. They fell headlong in love and married just months later. In due time, the marriage would produce two children, though with the complex personalities involved, it was always a complicated match.

In 1962, the couple invited Canadian poets David and Assia Wevill to spend a weekend with them in their home in village of North Tawton in Devon, England. It was then, as Hughes later wrote in a poem, that “The dreamer in me fell in love with her,” and a few short weeks later he embarked on an affair with Assia. 

A few months later, Plath and Hughes took a holiday in Ireland. On the fourth day, Hughes disappeared to London to meet Wevill, with whom he embarked on a 10 day trip through Spain, the same place where Plath and Hughes had honeymooned. Upon his arrival back home, the marriage unraveled when he refused to end his affair. Plath and Hughes separated in July of 1962. Read more about the tragic relationship of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

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Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American poet regarded as a major twentieth-century figure in the genre. She and her sisters were raised near coastal Maine by their single mother, who taught them to value their independence and appreciate literature, visual art, and music. Her middle name really was an homage to the New York City’s St. Vincent’s hospital, where the life of an uncle was saved before she was born.

After her parents were divorced, there was minimal contact with their father. Her mother, Cora, was frequently away from home, on the road as a visiting nurse and itinerant hairdresser. Edna and her sisters Norma and Kathleen were often left to their own devices. They made the best of the situation, turning their tasks into games. Edna’s forays into make-believe turned into a penchant for acting, which she did often and enthusiastically from childhood through her college years.

Voracious reader and precocious poet

Encouraged by her mother, Edna (who was more often called “Vincent” in her youth) immersed herself in great works of literature from an early age. She read Shakespeare, Keats, Longfellow, Shelley, and Wordsworth. At age of sixteen she compiled a dozen or so poems into a copybook and presented them to her mother as “Poetical Works of Vincent Millay.” The poems were mainly sonnets, a form that she would favor throughout her life as a poet.

In 1912, encouraged by her mother, 19-year-old Edna sent her poem, “Renascence” to The Lyric Year, a magazine that held a yearly poetry contest and published winning entries. The narrator of the poem writes from a mountaintop from which she observes the broad vista. Its lines consider human suffering and death, and after a refreshing rain, the narrator is once again able to experience joy and a rebirth of life — thus the title, “Renascence.”

The poem was accepted and included in the collection. Though it took only fourth place (causing quite a scandal), it caught the attention not only of readers who felt Edna was robbed of the top prize, but of Caroline Dow, a wealthy patron of the arts. Taken with Edna’s passion for poetry, Dow arranged to pay her tuition to attend Vassar College. Edna would otherwise not have been able to afford college.

Vassar College and Greenwich Village

Edna entered college at age 21, and soon became aware of her power to attract, and used this to her advantage. According to J.D. McClatchley, editor of Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems (2002):

“‘People fall in love with me … and annoy me and distress me and flatter me and excite me.’ And she responded in kind; there were torrid affairs with girls at school, adding to her campus notoriety, and tepid flings with older men who might help her career. Throughout her life, she did what she felt she must do in order to create the conditions necessary to accomplish her work.

After Vassar, she became the Circe of Greenwich Village. She was soon the talk of the town. She drank and partied and had affairs, and thereby was the envy of all, and to young women in particular she was the free spirit that American Babbitry had stifled. 

Her affairs were sometimes of the heart, and sometimes more practical. The writers she took as lovers (and invariably kept as friends afterward) … were in a position to both teach and help her. And she had always been a quick study. The poems she wrote then — wild, cool, elusive — intoxicated the Jazz Babies. She had found the pulse of the new generation.”

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends —

It gives a lovely light!

An outpouring of poems; a feminist slant

A Few Figs from Thistles, her first major collection (1921), explored, among other themes, female sexuality. Second April (also 1921) dealt with heartbreak, nature, and death — the latter being a topic she explored often.

It’s rare for a poet to attain what we now call superstar status, but that’s just what Edna achieved. Throughout the 1920s — call them Roaring or the Jazz Age — she recited to enthusiastic, sold-out crowds during her many reading tours at home and abroad. Interspersed were head-spinning numbers of love affairs with both men and women. Edna was open about her bisexuality, which was unusual for the time.

In Europe, she posed for surrealist photographer Man Ray and dined with the artist Constantin Brancusi. It was a heady time indeed, and the candle she burned at both ends was still glowing.

Pulitzer Prize and an unconventional marriage

In 1923, Edna won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for her fourth volume of poems, The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver. She was only the second person to receive a Pulitzer for poetry, and the first woman to win the prize.

That year, Edna also embarked on an unconventional marriage with Eugen Jan Boissevain. The handsome Dutch importer was a kindhearted man twelve years her senior, and Edna married him when, as her erstwhile lover Edmund Wilson saw it, “she was tired of breaking hearts and spreading havoc.”

Boissevain provided the support and stability Edna needed for her writing. But she wasn’t one to settle down, after all. Both she and her husband took other lovers throughout their marriage.  He completely supported her career, even taking on many domestic duties and organizing their social life at the country home they purchased together, a 700-acre farm called Steepletop in Austerlitz, NY.

Protest

Edna didn’t shy away from political causes. Her New York Times obituary describes her protest against the famed Sacco and Vanzetti affair:

“In the summer of 1927 the time drew near for the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Boston Italians whose trial and conviction of murder became one of the most celebrated labor causes of the United States. Only recently recovered from a nervous breakdown, Miss Millay flung herself into the fight for their lives.

A poem which had wide circulation at the time, ‘Justice Denied in Massachusetts,’ was her contribution to the fund raised for the defense campaign. Miss Millay also made a personal appeal to Governor Fuller.

In August she was arrested as one of the “death watch” demonstrators before the Boston State House … ‘I went to Boston fully expecting to be arrested — arrested by a polizia created by a government that my ancestors rebelled to establish,’ she said, when back in New York. ‘Some of us have been thinking and talking too long without doing anything. Poems are perfect; picketing, sometimes, is better.’”

Writing prolifically while wreaking havoc

Edna continued to push boundaries in her writing and her personal life. Her anti-war play Aria da Capo was performed to sell-out crowds on Cape Cod by the Provincetown Players. Her obsession with the shy young poet, George Dillon, who was gay, inspired one of her finest volumes of poetry, Fatal Interview. Published in 1931, it sold a stunning 50,000 copies in the first months of publication, a rarity for a book of poems, and during the Great Depression, at that.

Edna seemed to need to create chaos to thrive. According to J.D. McClatchley: “Millay spared no one — least of all herself — in her drive to create the kind of ‘havoc’ her poems feed on, and then to surround herself with the solitude to work that chaos into shimmering lines … Scandal, of course, only enhanced her celebrity … For women, she made complicated passion real; for men, she made it alluring.”

Life had becoming more fraught for the free-spirited poet as she reached middle age. While in Florida on working vacation with her husband, she was completing a manuscript for a new collection, Conversations at Midnight. Their hotel burned down and the manuscript was destroyed. In 1936, she was involved in a car accident that left her in such chronic pain that she became dependent on painkillers.

She was crushed when Eugen Boissevain died suddenly in 1949. The next year, she sat alone in their home, Steepletop, with a bottle of wine at the top of a staircase. She tumbled down the stairs, broke her neck, and died. It has been speculated that this may have been precipitated by a heart attack. Edna St. Vincent Millay was 58 years old and left a body of work that included some fifteen poetry collections, several plays, and many political writings.

Steepletop and the Millay Colony

A number of years after her death, the state of New York acquired a great portion of the acreage of Steepletop, and the funds were used to establish The Millay Colony for the Arts.

Today, this center offers residencies for writers and other creative artists, and has a museum dedicated to Millay’s life and work, as well as garden trails and her gravesite.

Edna St. Vincent Millay page on Amazon

More about Edna St. Vincent Millay on this site

Quotes by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1912)

Major Works

Renascence and Other Poems
First Figs and Other Poems
Second April
The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver
Aria da Capo, a Play in One Act
Collected Sonnets

Biographies about  Edna St. Vincent Millay

Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay   by Nancy Milford
What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems

of Edna St. Vincent Millay   by Daniel Mark Epstein

More Information 

Wikipedia
Edna St. Vincent Millay Society at Steepletop
Reader discussion of Millay’s works on Goodreads

Visit 

Steepletop – Austerlitz, NY
Millay Colony for the Arts – Austerlitz, NY

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Miles Franklin

Miles Franklin (October 14, 1879 – September 19, 1954) was an Australian author of novels and nonfiction, born Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin. Her best-known novel, My Brilliant Career, is the story of a teenage girl growing up in the Australian bush who longs to break free as her own person.

Franklin’s literary career was long but uneven, with occasional great gaps between almost feverish output. A need to support herself compelled her to work in a number of odd careers, though she often made use of her experiences in her storytelling. Critical reception of her work was also quite variable, and apparently quite sensitive to criticism, she occasionally used pseudonyms.

Early life and My Brilliant Career

Franklin was descended from Australian pioneers. She was born on her grandmother’s land near Talbingo Station and grew up on a small cattle farm owned by her father near Tumut. Later, the family moved to to Goulburn to farm dairy cattle. Originally, Franklin wished to study music, but that proved impractical, so she turned to writing. Some of the experiences of monotony and frustration that defined her girlhood on a farm made their way into her first novel, My Brilliant Career. She was only 18 years old when she finished writing it in 1899, and it was published in 1901 by Blackwoods of Edinburgh.

My Brilliant Career tells the story of Sybylla Melvyn, a high-strung, imaginative girl from the Australian countryside. When her parents fall on hard times, they send her to live with her grandmother in another part of the country. There she meets Harold Beecham. Convinced that she’s ugly and useless, Sybilla is surprised when the wealthy young man proposes marriage, but declines. Sybilla is then farmed out to be a domestic servant for a family to whom her father owes money. Despondent, she has a breakdown and returns to her parents’ home.

Beacham tracks her down and reiterates his proposal. Sybilla, determined to become a writer, once again refuses him and vows never to marry. Readers are left to ponder the possibility for themselves, for the story is open-ended.

My Brilliant Career was an immediate success, though the consequences for its author were mixed. Some of the novel’s fictional characters were only thinly veiled, causing a bit of uproar in Goulburn. Some saw the book as an attack on rural life. Most critics praised the book, however, including one who described it as “a warm embodiment of Australian life,” and “a book full of sunlight.”

Life in the U.S. and England

Franklin set off in 1906 to make her way through life in America. Settling in Chicago, she’d all but given up on the idea of becoming a writer, and began doing secretarial work for the National Women’s Trade Union League of America. Though at the time she fervently rejected labeling herself as a feminist, her work with the trade union brought her into contact with members of the feminist movement who were campaigning for women’s suffrage and agitating for better working conditions for women. One of those was Alice Henry, a fellow Australian who was in the U.S. to help further the suffrage movement. She and Franklin became close lifelong friends.

Her brief stint as a domestic servant served as the basis for her subsequent book, Everyday Folk and Dawn (1909). In the interim years, she wrote a sequel to My Brilliant Career titled My Career Goes Bung, but it proved too far ahead of its time and wasn’t published until some forty years later, in 1946.

In 1915, Franklin moved to England. Like a few of her fellow female authors who contributed to World War I efforts, she did her share. First working in slum nurseries, she later joined the Scottish Women’s Hospital Unit. Under their auspices she became an ambulance driver and served as a cook in a 200-bed tent hospital in Macedonia.

Books by “Brent of Bin Bin”

In the 1920s, Franklin traveled back and forth from Britain to Australia, always by way of the U.S. During this period, she wrote a set of historical novels set in the Australian bush and published them under the odd pseudonym “Brent of Bin Bin.” She worried that nothing she did would ever live up to the success of her freshman effort, My Brilliant Career, and may have also felt that an assumed name would shield her from negative reviews. 

Under this pseudonym, Up the Country (1928), Ten Creeks Run (1929), and Back to Bool Bool (1931) came out in quick succession. This suite of Brent of Bin Bin novels would grow to six volumes, but the remaining three wouldn’t appear until the 1950s.

See also: Quotes by Miles Franklin

Return to Australia

Franklin returned to live permanently Australia in 1932, and began writing under her own name once again. All That Swagger, considered her best-known work second only to My Brilliant Career, was published in 1936.

Once she had settled back into her home country, Franklin became deeply involved in the Australian literary community. Residing in Carlton, NSW, she became a member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers, and supported literary journals such as Southerly. She was a mentor to young writers and entertained other authors in her home. She also engaged in a number of literary collaborations including a 1939 novel, Pioneers on Parade, co-written with fellow Australian writer Dymphna Cusack. She published a trio of non-fiction works, though none became as well known as her novels.

Though Franklin had a number suitors throughout her young adulthood, she never married nor had any children. In 1937, she was nominated as Officer of the Order of the British Empire, an honor she declined.

Death and legacy

Miles Franklin died in September, 1954 in New South Wales, Australia, of a coronary occlusion at the age of 75. In her obituary in the Melbourne Age, she was described as follows:

“In her lifetime, petite, slim Miles Franklin of the ready smile and quick, bright eyes always carefully parried inquiries. She is quoted as having remarked to a friend on one occasion, ‘I have always enjoyed a little mystery.’

In a recent study of Miles Franklin, Henrietta Drake-Brockman said of her, “There are no half measures about Miles Franklin. Her heart is as wide as her country’s ‘back paddocks,’ her pride as tough as a well-tanned hide, and her honesty of conviction as bright and clarifying as sunlight.”

Indeed, she seemed to like to remain a bit inscrutable. A friend who donated some of her papers to the Melbourne Library said of her: She hated humbug. She was a good friend, who did good by stealth.”

She bequeathed her estate to fund the Miles Franklin Literary Award, given annually to “a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases” In 2016, the award was valued at approximately $60,000 in U.S. dollars. The first award was given in 1957.

A charming Australian film version of My Brilliant Career was released in 1979, reviving interest in Franklin’s life and works.

A novel titled On Dearborn Street was published in 1981. A love story peppered with plenty of American slang, it reflects Franklin’s years in the U.S.

Miles Franklin page on Amazon

More about Miles Franklin on this site

Quotes by Miles Franklin

Major works

My Brilliant Career  (1901)
Some Everyday Folk and Dawn  (1909)
Old Blastus of Bandicoot (1931)


All That Swagger  (1936)
Pioneers on Parade (1939)


Up the Country



My Career Goes Bung  (1946)

Biographies 


Her Brilliant Career: The Life of Stella Miles Franklin by Jill Roe

More information

Wikipedia
Reader discussion of Franklin’s books on Goodreads

Film adaptation

My Brilliant Career (1979 film)

Visit

Miles Franklin Goulburn: A Self-guided Walking Tour – Goulburn, Australia

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Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin (February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904) was an American author who made her mark writing fiction, and was best known for the novella The Awakening (1899), a work quite controversial in its time.

She was born Kate O’Flaherty in St. Louis, descended on her mother’s side from the old French families of that city. Her father was Captain Thomas O’Flaherty, a wealthy merchant active in local affairs. Kate was raised in the French and Irish traditions of Catholicism, and educated at Sacred Heart convent.

Her father died when she was around five years old, after which she developed a strong bond with her maternal lineage — her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. Kate was an avid reader, devouring contemporary novels, fairy tales, poetry, and religious dramas.

Marriage, family, and widowhood

With her beauty and charm, Kate was considered one of the “belles of St. Louis.” Shortly after her introduction to society, she married Oscar Chopin of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana in 1870. The couple moved to New Orleans, then lived on his Natcihtoches plantation and other parts of Louisiana. Those years found her immersed in the Creole and Cajun cultures that figured so prominently in her writing. She had six children in quick succession, from 1871 to 1879.

Oscar Chopin died in 1882, leaving her not only widowed with six young children to raise, but in extreme debt of $42,0000 — in today’s dollars equal to hundreds of thousands. She tried to make good on the plantation and general store he owned, but her mother prevailed upon her to move back to St. Louis, and she sold the businesses.

Kate Chopin’s children settled well into her bustling home city, but a year after she moved back, her mother died. Compounding the earlier stress of losing her husband and livelihood, she struggled with depression. Her family physician suggested she take up writing as an outlet. This was fortunate and somewhat surprising, for it was right around this same time that Charlotte Perkins Gilman, suffering from postpartum depression, was forbidden by her doctor to write or have any sort of creative outlet. Chopin did indeed find writing to be the therapeutic outlet she needed.

The start of a literary career

By the early 1890s, Chopin forged a successful writing career, contributing short stories and articles to local publications and literary journals. Her work found further favor in national magazines like Vogue and Atlantic Monthly. She addressed themes in women’s lives that weren’t often confronted in literature. Though she didn’t identify as a feminist, she was influenced by the strong women who raised her. In her works, women were a force to be reckoned with, and conveyed her belief that women could claim their identities apart from men.

In her writings, she was a realist and represented the world as it was in her time, avoiding the sentimentality of popular fiction. She wasn’t afraid to confront harsh themes, as she did with the issues of racism and hypocrisy in her 1893 short story “Désirée’s Baby.”

Read the full text of The Awakening (1899)

Influence of Guy de Maupessant

Kate Chopin’s major literary influence was Guy de Maupessant, A French author from Normandy best known for short stories. In his time, some of the themes he explored in his writing were sexuality, depression, and loneliness. Elements of the human condition expressed print were often taboo — and in effect, he was often considered immoral as a result. Chopin described how moved she felt after she read de Maupessant’s work:

“… I read his stories and marveled at them. Here was life, not fiction; for where were the plots, the old fashioned mechanism and stage trapping that in a vague, unthinkable way I had fancied were essential to the art of story making. Here was a man who had escaped from tradition and authority, who had entered into himself and looked out upon life through his own being and with his own eyes; and who, in a direct and simple way, told us what he saw…”

Kate Chopin page on Amazon

Literary accomplishments and The Awakening

Kate Chopin wrote short stories and short novels rather than tomes, and set most of them in Creole culture. At Fault (1890), a novel about a young widow and the sexual constraints of women, foreshadows The Awakening (1899). Bayou Folk (1894), a collection of picutesque stories of Creole life on Louisiana plantation, was told with an exquisite eye to detail. It was the first of her works to gain national attention, and was followed by another collection of short stories, A Night in Acadie (1897). Her fiction was an outlet for her observations of late 19th-century Southern American society, especially, as mentioned above, the Creole and Cajun cultures she had lived with in  Louisiana.

Her most mature and best-known work remains The Awakening. It was controversial in its time, garnering more negative reviews than positive, including one by her contemporary, Willa Cather, who offered up a rather harsh assessment.

The female characters in The Awakening didn’t adhere to the standards of what was acceptable behavior of the time. Edna Pontillier, the main character, has sexual urges and questions the sanctity of motherhood. Above all, there’s the theme of marital infidelity from the perspective of a wife. The book was widely banned, and even fell out of print for several decades before being rediscovered in the 1970s. It’s now considered a classic of feminist fiction. You can read the full text of The Awakening on this site.

Perhaps the poor reception of The Awakening discouraged Chopin, as her output slowed considerably after its publication. She published a few short stories, but wasn’t able to replicate the kind of early success she’d had in the early 1890s with her contributions to magazines and journals. Mostly, she lived on the inheritance she had received from her mother. All told, the period of prolific literary output didn’t last much more than a dozen or so years.

You might also like this 1899 review of The Awakening

A foremother of feminist literature

Chopin is admired as one of the foremothers of 20th century feminist literature. She may not have considered herself a feminist as such; she simply thought that women’s desires and ambitions were just as valid as men’s. As such, in her fiction, she focused on women’s constant struggles to forge an identity of their own, especially within the rigid constraints of Southern culture.

Though Chopin’s body of work is primarily fiction, her stories presented  profound and very real observations. She allowed the range of human experience she viewed in everyday life to come through in her writing.

Kate Chopin died rather suddenly of a brain hemorrhage. She returned from a visit to the World’s Fair taking place in St. Louis on an August evening in 1904, complaining of severe pain in her head. She called one of her sons to come to her, but by the time he arrived, she was unconscious. Her other children rushed to her side, and though she briefly regained consciousness, she died the next day. She was 54 years old and was survived by all six of her children.

On Certain Bright, Brisk Days: Kate Chopin on her writing life

More about Kate Chopin on this site

Review by Willa Cather of The Awakening
The Awakening: An Analysis
On Certain Brisk, Bright Days
The Awakening (1899) – full text
Influential Quotes by Kate Chopin

Major Works

At Fault  (1890)
Bayou Folk  (1894)
A Night in Acadie (1897)
The Awakening  (1899)
Lilacs and Other Stories 

Biographies about  Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography by Per Seyersted
Unveiling Kate Chopin by Emily Toth
Kate Chopin’s Private Papers Emily Toth and Per Seyersted

More Information

Wikipedia
Reader discussion of Chopin’s books on Goodreads

Read and Listen online

Chopin on Project Gutenberg 
Audio recordings of Chopin’s works on Librivox

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Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell (née Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson, September 29, 1810 – November 12, 1865) was a British author known for short stories and novels focusing on social classes. In literary circles and beyond, she was often referred to simply as “Mrs. Gaskell.”

The upheaval of class boundaries, the industrialization of England, and women’s issues in the Victorian era were all themes of her work. So too was religion — her father and husband were both Unitarian ministers. 

Elizabeth’s mother died a year or so after giving birth to her. Her father wasn’t able to care for her, so she was sent to live with an aunt. They lived in Cheshire, England, which years later would provide the inspiration for her novel, Cranford. Her aunt encouraged her to read classic books, which fed her love of writing. Her brother, who traveled widely, sent her books from near and far. Elizabeth grew up to be a young woman with a kind heart and gentle personality, and was also known for her beauty.

A match of hearts and minds

She married William Gaskell in 1832. Her husband was a minister of the Unitarian Church, and theirs proved to be a successful and companionable match. He became well known in his profession, and also somewhat esteemed for his literary work. Theirs was a sociable life, with Elizabeth gladly assuming the duties of hostess in her role as a minister’s wife.

Both Elizabeth and her husband were involved in social reform and seeking justice for the poor.  “Sketches of the Poor, No. 1,” a series of poems she wrote with her husband, was published in January of 1837 in Blackwood’s Magazine.

A child dies, then a career is born

Her first novel, Mary Barton was written in a time of great grief following the 1844 death of her baby son at age one. More than a decade before, she had given birth to a stillborn girl. Mrs. Gaskell would go on to give birth to four daughters.

Up until that time, she hadn’t written anything of consequence other than the poems she collaborated on with her husband, as noted above, and these tragedies seemed to be the catalyst for her writing endeavors. She was also highly attuned to her experiences and surroundings. Living near Manchester in the early days of her marriage gave her a view of the rise of industrial society; and traveling with her husband to Germany and Belgium before their son was born gave rise to her interest in German literature.

After working on the book for three years, it was ready to be sent out to publishers, and like the Brontë sisters before her, Mrs. Gaskell found it difficult to get the attention of publishers. After languishing at Chapman & Hall for a year, she made an inquiry. The manuscript hadn’t been read at all, but once prompted, the publisher immediately accepted it and it was printed shortly thereafter. Mary Barton was published in 1848.

During the period in which she worked on Mary Barton, Mrs. Gaskell also wrote a small number of short stories, published pseudonymously.

Though Mary Barton was also published under an assumed name, it didn’t take long for the author’s true identity to be revealed. The novel was an immediate success, selling thousands of copies and setting the stage for a series of novels that were hugely admired and respected by critics and literary peers alike. One of her greatest admirers was Charles Dickens.

Some of her other well-known novels include Cranford (1851–53), Ruth (1853), North and South (1854–55), Sylvia’s Lovers (1863), and Wives and Daughters (1865).

During this period of great productivity, she also perfected the role of devoted wife and mother, endearing her to Victorian society — one which often frowned upon writing women. Friendly and charming, she was also cherished by friends and relatives.

You might also like: Quotes from Elizabeth Gaskell’s Novels

Life of Charlotte Brontë

After making a name for herself, she forged warm friendships with many well-known writers, including Charlotte Brontë and her sisters Emily and Anne. After Charlotte’s death, her father, Patrick Brontë asked Mrs.Gaskell to write her biography. Life of Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857, and helped secure the literary reputation of both author and subject.

By the time of Mrs. Gaskell’s own death in 1865, Life of Charlotte Brontë was still considered one of the best, most readable biographies in the English language, arguably comparable to the best of her novels.

Elizabeth Gaskell page on Amazon

Legacy

Despite the stellar reputation she had during her lifetime and shortly beyond, most of Mrs. Gaskell’s novels gradually fell out of favor and into obscurity. In the first half of the twentieth century, she was considered a minor writer of the feminine variety. She was unfairly criticized has lacking the “masculinity” to portray social problems.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Mrs. Gaskell’s work was re-evaluated and praised for its vision in presenting burgeoning industrial society and the social problems of the classes. North and South, for example, was a pioneering novel in its presentation of the conflicts between workers and their employers. 

Mrs. Gaskell is now considered a master of Victorian literature, and is praised for her visionary use of storytelling to bring to life the rapid changes that she observed during her lifetime. In the words of the Elizabeth Gaskell Society:

“Despite her occasional tendency towards melodrama, Elizabeth had a natural gift for storytelling and Dickens referred to her as his ‘dear Scheherazade’. She originally published anonymously but, according to Victorian conventions, her readers came to know her as ‘Mrs Gaskell’ a name which made her sound matronly and safe.

Elizabeth Gaskell (as we prefer to call her) was actually courageous and progressive in her style and subject matter, and often framed her stories as critiques of Victorian attitudes (particularly those towards women). She braved the opprobrium of her husband’s Unitarian congregation, in part for her depiction of prostitution and illegitimacy, particularly in her novel Ruth, and also for her challenge to the traditional view of women’s role in society.”

Elizabeth Gaskell died in 1865, at age 65.

More about Elizabeth Gaskell on this site

Quotes from Elizabeth Gaskell’s Novels

Major Works

North and South
Cranford
Gothic Tales
Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story
Life of Charlotte Brontë
Mary Barton
Ruth

Biographies about Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories by Jenny Uglow
Elizabeth Gaskell: A Portrait in Letters by Chapple and Sharps
Elizabeth Gaskell: The Early Years by John Chapple
Elizabeth Gaskell: A Biography by Winifred Gerin

More Information

Wikipedia
The Gaskell Society
Reader discussion of Gaskell’s books on Goodreads

Read and listen online

Gaskell’s books on Project Gutenberg
Audio recordings of Gaskell’s works on Librivox

Visit and research

Elizabeth Gaskell’s Home , Manchester, England
Gaskell Manuscript & Letters Archive ,

University of Manchester, John Rylands University Library

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