Lella Warren (March 22, 1899 – 1982) was a novelist and short story writer who is best known for her historical novel ''Foundation Stone'' chronicling the life of Alabama settlers in the 19th century. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1987.

Biography

Lee Ella 'Lella' Warren was born in 1899, in

Clayton, Alabama Clayton is a town in and the county seat of Barbour County, Alabama, United States. The population was 3,008 at the 2010 census, up from 1,475 in 2000. History Clayton has been the county seat since 1834, two years after the creation of Barbou ...

, to Lee Ella Underwood and Benjamin Smart Warren, a physician who helped to found the U.S.

Public Health Service In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

. Warren's family moved around a good deal during her childhood as her father, then in the Marine Hospital Service, was moved from one posting to another. In 1917, she graduated from Western High School in Washington, D.C. By then her writing was developed enough that her writing teacher sent one of her stories to an editor for

Century Magazine ''The Century Magazine'' was an illustrated monthly magazine first published in the United States in 1881 by The Century Company of New York City, which had been bought in that year by Roswell Smith and renamed by him after the Century Associati ...

, who responded encouragingly. Warren started her undergraduate education at

George Washington University The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Chartered in 1821 by the United States Congress, GWU is the largest Higher educat ...

in 1917, transferred to

Goucher College Goucher College ( ') is a private liberal arts college in Towson, Maryland. It was chartered in 1885 by a conference in Baltimore led by namesake John F. Goucher and local leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church.https://archive.org/details/h ...

for her sophomore year, and returned to GWU for her last two years, receiving her A.B. degree in 1921. After graduating, she married John Spanogle, and in late 1922 they had a daughter. They divorced in 1930. In 1936, Warren married the journalist Gerald Breckenridge. They divorced four years later. In 1941, she married her third and last husband, Buel W. "Dan" Patch.

Writing

Warren published her first novel, the quasi-autobiographical ''A Touch of Earth'', in 1926. It was successful enough to prompt an editor for ''

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'' to put Warren under contract. For the next decade or so, she sold short stories and essays to ''Cosmopolitan'' and other magazines like ''

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'', ''

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'', '' Collier's'', and '' College Humor''. To support herself following her first divorce, she also undertook various jobs in journalism, public relations, and government service. Warren is best known for the 1940 novel ''Foundation Stone'', considered her

magnum opus A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...

. An historical novel about the Whetstone family, it was based on the history of Warren's own ancestors after their arrival on the Alabama frontier in the 1820s. The novel follows three generations of the Whetstone family after they leave a South Carolina plantation with worn-out soil and strike out for the Alabama wilderness. Warren went beyond family history and did extensive research in archival documents such as court records to ensure the accuracy of her narrative. Her publisher, Alfred Knopf, brought ''Foundation Stone'' out initially as a Borzoi Book in a special limited edition, following up with a trade edition. An overnight success, by the end of the year it was on both the ''Publishers Weekly'' and the

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's lists of bestsellers, reaching no. 2 on the latter. It was translated into Portuguese, Swedish, and Danish within a few years. Key to the novel's success was Warren's focus on the family life of Southern pioneers outside of the plantation world that

Margaret Mitchell Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell (November 8, 1900 – August 16, 1949) was an American novelist and journalist. Mitchell wrote only one novel, published during her lifetime, the American Civil War-era novel '' Gone with the Wind'', for which she wo ...

had popularized and glamorized in ''

Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind most often refers to: * ''Gone with the Wind'' (novel), a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell * ''Gone with the Wind'' (film), the 1939 adaptation of the novel Gone with the Wind may also refer to: Music * ''Gone with the Wind'' ...

'' just a few years earlier. The novel's success prompted the

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to select Warren as a Woman of the Year for 1941 (the same year it honored Margaret Mitchell). In 1952, Warren published a sequel to ''Foundation Stone'', the second in what she planned to make a trilogy. ''Whetstone Walls'' again featured the Whetstone family, with a central character, Rob Whetstone, based on Warren's father. Picking up after the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

(where ''Foundation Stone'' had left off), it followed the Whetstone family to the end of the century. Warren never completed the third novel in the trilogy, although her manuscript notes suggest she planned to incorporate sections from some of her short stories and unpublished writings into this novel. Warren was still working on her third Whetstone novel when she died of cancer in 1982. Her papers—including correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and personal memorabilia—are held by Auburn University at Montgomery. In 1987, Warren was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame. In 1989, a compendium of her unpublished writing came out under the title ''Family Fiction: Unpublished Narratives of Lella Warren''.

Biography

Writing

References

Further reading