The life she wished to live : a biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The yearling / Ann McCutchan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McCutchan, Ann, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan, 1896-1953.

Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan.

Women authors, American--Biography.

Women authors, American.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xxii, 418 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First Edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, [2021]

Summary:

"A comprehensive and engaging biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the beloved classic The Yearling. Washington, DC, born and Wisconsin educated, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an unlikely author of a coming-of-age novel about a poor central Florida child and his pet fawn-much less one that has become synonymous with Florida literature writ large. Rawlings was a tough, ambitious, and independent woman who refused the conventions of her early-twentieth-century upbringing. Determined to forge a literary career beyond those limitations, she found her voice in the remote, hardscrabble life of Cross Creek, Florida. There, Rawlings purchased a commercial orange grove and discovered a fascinating world out of which to write-and a dialect of the poor, swampland community that the literary world had yet to hear. She employed her sensitive eye, sharp ear for dialogue, and philosophical spirit to bring to life this unknown corner of America in vivid, tender detail, a feat that earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1938. Her accomplishments came at a price: a failed first marriage, financial instability, a contentious libel suit, alcoholism, and physical and emotional upheaval. With intimate access to Rawlings's correspondence and revealing early writings, Ann McCutchan uncovers a larger-than-life woman who writes passionately and with verve, whose emotions change on a dime, and who drinks to excess, smokes, swears, and even occasionally joins in on an alligator hunt. The Life She Wished to Live paints a lively portrait of Rawlings, her contemporaries-including her legendary editor, Maxwell Perkins, and friends Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald-and the Florida landscape and people that inspired her"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Origins

The perfect daughter

Wisconsin

New York

Louisville

Rochester

The creek

South moon under

Coming apart

Golden apples

What about a novel about a boy

The widening circle

The yearling

Pulitzer

When the whippoorwill

Today's woman

Good women, marriage, and a memoir

Wartime, Zora

Lawsuit

What is home?

On trial

"I have never felt more inadequate"

A new outpost

The cosmic novel

Ferment

Losses

"Down"

Legacy.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 363-400) and index.

ISBN:

9780393353495

0393353494

OCLC:

1156989790