Seven Houses: A Memoir of Time and Places

by Josephine Winslow Johnson

Miss Johnson has taken the houses she lived in, the essential memories of certain times, places and landscapes that mark our lives, as the theme for a book of uncommon power and distinction. Beginning with her mother's family house, and describing with clarity and without any false nostalgia that vanished life of prosperous small-town America, Miss Johnson goes on to write of the homes she has known. In each of them she has observed not only the slow changes of life and her own minutely examined emotions, but also that larger world of nature that has always been her central concern.

Seven Houses is a memoir, a confession, a book about the search for one's roots and the "love for land" that is far more deeply rooted than one's own life can be. Like The Inland Island, it is a book that leaves the reader "dazzled with sunlight, ears ringing with birdsong."

It is, quite simply, a beautiful and moving experience.

153 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

American novelist, poet, and essayist who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1935 at age 24 for her first novel, Now in November. Shortly thereafter, she published Winter Orchard, a collection of short stories that had previously appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, The St. Louis Review, and Hound & Horn. Of these stories, "Dark" won an O. Henry Award in 1934[1], and "John the Six" won an O. Henry Award third prize the following year. Johnson continued writing short stories and won three more O. Henry Awards: for "Alexander to the Park" (1942), "The Glass Pigeon" (1943), and "Night Flight" (1944).

Johnson was bornin Kirkwood, Missouri. She attended Washington University from 1926 to 1931, but did not earn a degree. She wrote her first novel, Now In November, while living in her mother's attic in Webster Groves, Missouri. She remained on her farm in Webster Groves and completed Winter Orchard in 1935. She published four more books before marrying Grant G. Cannon, editor in chief of the Farm Quarterly, in 1942. The couple moved to Iowa City, where she taught at the University of Iowa for the next three years. They moved to Hamilton County, Ohio in 1947, where she published Wildwood.

Johnson had three children. The Cannons continued to move beyond the advancing urban sprawl of Cincinnati, finally settling on the wooded acreage in Clermont County, Ohio, which is the setting of The Inland Island. In 1955, Washington University awarded her an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

She published four more books before her death, from pneumonia, on February 27, 1990, in Batavia, Ohio at age 79.[2] (Wiki)

Reviews

[Harry Allagree · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me Josephine Johnson remains enigmatic, a woman with an overall mystical aura. She was a fantastic writer, so descriptive, so poetic, so knowledgeable. Reading her work is an experience in literary beauty. She was obviously, from the way she lived her life, also inquisitive; open-minded, mostly; honest & and almost painfully truthful at times; with an acute awareness of the natural world & herself as part of it. Yet, in my mind, there's always an unknown, unspoken, underlying something that hints of deep sadness, tiredness, aloofness. But she never does give one more than hint of that. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her first novel at a very early age. But though she wrote a number of books after that, including this one, they never measured up to her first work. This present book is a collection of recollections about her life at seven places in which she lived. That said, she freely narrates, often jumping from topic to topic, from observations/insights about insects, animals to the same about family, other persons & the world, which can be confusing.

[Teri-K · Rating 2 out of 5]

Uneven. There were some fascinating or thoughtful sections, but other parts of it were meaningless to someone who doesn't know the family. All in all I didn't find it a satisfying read.

[Agnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

No one can articulate our childhood thoughts or relationship with nature like Josephine Winslow Johnson. I am reading everything of hers I can get my hands on!

"Bees, ants, all the nervous zitzit things that fly and buzz and scurry, possessed of demon souls in the knowledge of the shortness of their lives-they can drive you crazy."