Marjorie Rawlings
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Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (August 8, 1896 – December 14, 1953)
accessed December 8, 2014.
was an
American writer The Lists of American writers include: United States By ethnicity *List of African-American writers * List of Asian-American writers * List of Cuban-American writers * List of Egyptian-American writers * List of Italian-American women writers ...
who lived in rural
Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...
and wrote novels with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, ''
The Yearling ''The Yearling'' is a novel by American writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, published in March 1938. It was the main selection of the Book of the Month Club in April 1938. It won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. It was the best-selling ...
—''about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn—won a
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during ...
in 1939 and was later made into a movie of the same name. The book was written before the concept of
young adult fiction Young adult literature (YA) is typically written for readers aged 12 to 18 and includes most of the themes found in adult fiction, such as family dysfunction, substance abuse, alcoholism, and sexuality. It is characterized by simpler world build ...
arose but is now commonly included in teen reading lists.


Early life and education

Kinnan was born in 1896 in
Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
, the daughter of Ida May (
née The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...
Traphagen) and Arthur Frank Kinnan, an attorney for the U.S. Patent Office. Bloom, Harold, ed. ''American Women Fiction Writers, 1900–1960'', Volume 3. Chelsea House, Philadelphia (1998) . She grew up in the Brookland neighborhood and was interested in writing as early as age six; she submitted stories to the children's sections of newspapers until she was 16. At age 15, she entered into a contest a story titled "The Reincarnation of Miss Hetty", for which she won a prize.Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Biography , Dictionary of Literary Biography
/ref> She attended the
University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...
, where she joined
Kappa Alpha Theta Kappa Alpha Theta (), commonly referred to simply as Theta, is an international Fraternities and sororities, sorority founded on January 27, 1870, at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. It was the first Greek-letter fraternity established ...
sorority and received a degree in English in 1918. She was selected as a member of the local senior women's
honor society In the United States, an honor society is an organization that recognizes individuals who rank above a set standard in various domains such as academics, leadership, and other personal achievements, not all of which are based on ranking systems. ...
on campus, which in 1920 became a chapter of the national senior women's society,
Mortar Board Mortar Board is an American national honor society for college juniors and seniors. It was established in 1918 in Syracuse, New York through the merger of four local women's organizations from four institutions. It started admitting men in 1975 ...
. She met Charles Rawlings while working for the school literary magazine, and married him in 1919. Kinnan briefly worked for the
YWCA The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women, young women, and girls in more than 100 countries. The World office is currently based in Geneva, Swit ...
editorial board in
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
. The couple moved to
Louisville, Kentucky Louisville is the List of cities in Kentucky, most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeastern United States, Southeast, and the list of United States cities by population, 27th-most-populous city ...
, where they both wrote for the ''
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'', and then to
Rochester, New York Rochester is a city in and the county seat, seat of government of Monroe County, New York, United States. It is the List of municipalities in New York, fourth-most populous city and 10th most-populated municipality in New York, with a populati ...
, where they wrote for the ''
Rochester Journal-American The ''Rochester Journal-American'' was an American newspaper in Rochester, New York owned by William Randolph Hearst. History The ''Rochester Evening Journal'' began operations in 1922, as part of an statewide expansion planned by Hearst, who w ...
'' and where Marjorie wrote a syndicated column called "Songs of the Housewife". In 1928, with a small inheritance from her mother, the Rawlings purchased a 72-acre (290,000 m2)
orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower ** Orange juice *Orange (colour), the color of an orange fruit, occurs between red and yellow in the vi ...
grove near
Hawthorne, Florida Hawthorne () is a city in Alachua County, Florida, United States, incorporated in 1881. Indigenous peoples of the Americas had been living in the area since around 100 CE; Hawthorne grew around their trading trails. Throughout its history, Hawt ...
, in a settlement named Cross Creek for its location between Orange Lake and
Lochloosa Lake Lochloosa Lake is a lake about in area in Alachua County, Florida, near Hawthorne, and is up to deep. It is drained by Cross Creek into Orange Lake. It is largely surrounded by the Lochloosa Wildlife Management Area and is a Fish Management A ...
. She brought the area to international fame through her writing. She was fascinated with the remote wilderness and the lives of Cross Creek residents, her
Florida cracker Florida crackers are the descendants of colonial-era British American pioneer settlers in what is now the U.S. state of Florida, and a subculture of White Southerners. The first crackers arrived in 1763 after Spain traded Florida to Great Britai ...
neighbors, and felt a profound and transforming connection to the region and the land.Bellman, Samuel.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
'.
Twayne Publishers Gale is a global provider of research and digital learning resources. The company is based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, United States, west of Detroit. It has been a division of Cengage since 2007. The company, formerly known as Gale Research a ...
, New York: 1974.
Wary at first, the local residents soon warmed to her and opened up their lives and experiences to her. Marjorie actually made many visits to meet with Calvin and Mary Long to observe their family relationships. This relationship ended up being used as a model for the family in her most successful novel, ''
The Yearling ''The Yearling'' is a novel by American writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, published in March 1938. It was the main selection of the Book of the Month Club in April 1938. It won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. It was the best-selling ...
.'' The Longs lived in a clearing named Pat's Island, but Marjorie renamed the clearing "Baxter's Island." Marjorie filled several notebooks with descriptions of the animals, plants, Southern dialect, and recipes, and she used these descriptions in her writings.


Career


Author and writer

Encouraged by her editor at
Scribner's Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City that has published several notable American authors, including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjo ...
,
Maxwell Perkins William Maxwell Evarts "Max" Perkins (September 20, 1884 – June 17, 1947) was an American book editor, best remembered for discovering authors Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Thomas Wolfe. Early life and ...
, who was impressed by the letters she wrote him about her life in Cross Creek, Rawlings began writing stories set in the nearby
Big Scrub The Big Scrub was one of the largest areas (75,000 ha) of lowland subtropical rainforest in eastern Australia. It was intensively cleared for agricultural use in the 19th century (1801–1900) by settlers. By the late 19th century less than 1 ...
. In 1930, Scribner's accepted two of her stories, "Cracker Chidlings" and "Jacob's Ladder", both about the poor, backcountry Florida residents who were quite similar to her neighbors at Cross Creek. Local reception to her stories was mixed between puzzlement concerning about whom she was writing, and rage—one mother apparently recognized her son as a subject in a story and threatened to whip Rawlings until she was dead.Bigelow, Gordon. ''Frontier Eden: The Literary Career of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings''. University of Florida Press, Gainesville; 1956. Her first novel, ''South Moon Under'', was published in 1933. The book captures the richness of the Big Scrub and its environs in telling the story of a young man, Lant, who must support himself and his mother by making and selling
moonshine Moonshine is alcohol proof, high-proof liquor, traditionally made or distributed alcohol law, illegally. The name was derived from a tradition of distilling the alcohol (drug), alcohol at night to avoid detection. In the first decades of the ...
, and what he must do when a traitorous cousin threatens to turn him in. Moonshiners are the subject of several of her stories, and Rawlings lived with a moonshiner for several weeks near
Ocala, Florida Ocala ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Marion County, Florida, United States. Located in North Central Florida, the city's population was 63,591 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, up from 56,315 at the 2010 census and making ...
, to prepare for writing the book. ''South Moon Under'' was included in the
Book of the Month Club Book of the Month (founded 1926) is a United States subscription-based e-commerce service that offers a selection of five to seven new hardcover books each month to its members. Books are selected and endorsed by a panel of judges, and members ch ...
and was a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during ...
. That same year, she and her husband Charles were divorced; living in rural Florida did not appeal to him. One of her least well-received books, ''Golden Apples'', came out in 1935. It tells the stories of several people who suffer from unrequited love from people unsuited for them. Rawlings was disappointed in it, and in a 1935 letter to her publisher Max Perkins, she called it "interesting trash instead of literature." She found immense success in 1938 with ''The Yearling'' (also set in the Big Scrub), a story about a Florida boy and his pet deer and his relationship with his father, which she originally intended as a story for young readers. It was selected for the Book of the Month Club, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1939.
MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, commonly shortened to MGM or MGM Studios) is an American Film production, film and television production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered ...
purchased the rights to the film version which was released in 1946, and it made her famous. In 1942, Rawlings published ''Cross Creek'', an autobiographical account of her relationships with her neighbors and her beloved Florida hammocks. ''Cross Creek'' also was chosen by the Book of the Month Club and was released in an armed services edition (D-112), which was sent to servicemen during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
.Acton, Patricia. ''Invasion of Privacy: The Cross Creek Trial of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings''. University of Florida Press, Gainesville: 1988, . In addition ''The Yearling'' (B-55 and S-33) and ''South Moon Under'' (724) were published in the
Armed Services Editions Armed Services Editions (ASEs) were small paperback books of fiction and nonfiction that were distributed in the American military during World War II. From 1943 to 1947, some 122 million copies of more than 1,300 ASE titles were distributed to ...
series. Rawlings's final novel, ''The Sojourner''—published in 1953 and
set Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics *Set (mathematics), a collection of elements *Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively Electro ...
in the north—was about the life of a man and his relationship to his family: a difficult mother who favors her other, first-born son and his relationship to this absent older brother. To absorb the natural setting so vital to her writing, she bought an old farmhouse in
Van Hornesville, New York Van Hornesville is a hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. ...
, and spent part of each year there until her death. The novel was less well-received critically than her Florida writings and did little to enhance her literary reputation. She published 33 short stories from 1912 to 1949. As many of Rawlings's works were centered in the northern and central Florida area, she was often considered a regional writer. Rawlings rejected this label saying, "I don't hold any brief for regionalism, and I don't hold with the regional novel as such … don't make a novel about them unless they have a larger meaning than just quaintness."


Invasion of privacy case

In 1943, Rawlings faced a
libel Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...
suit for ''Cross Creek'', filed by her neighbor Zelma Cason, whom Rawlings had met the first day she moved to Florida. Cason had helped to soothe the mother made upset by her son's depiction in "Jacob's Ladder". Cason claimed Rawlings made her out to be a "hussy". Rawlings had assumed their friendship was intact and spoke with her immediately. Cason went ahead with the lawsuit seeking $100,000 for
invasion of privacy The right to privacy is an element of various legal traditions that intends to restrain governmental and private actions that threaten the privacy of individuals. Over 185 national constitutions mention the right to privacy. Since the global ...
(as the courts found libel too ambiguous). It was a cause of action that had never been argued in a Florida court. Rawlings used Cason's forename in the book but described her in this passage:
Zelma is an ageless
spinster Spinster or old maid is a term referring to an unmarried woman who is older than what is perceived as the prime age range during which women usually marry. It can also indicate that a woman is considered unlikely to ever marry. The term origin ...
resembling an angry and efficient canary. She manages her orange grove and as much of the village and county as needs management or will submit to it. I cannot decide whether she should have been a man or a mother. She combines the more violent characteristics of both and those who ask for or accept her ministrations think nothing at being cursed loudly at the very instant of being tenderly fed, clothed, nursed, or guided through their troubles.Rawlings, Marjorie K. ''Cross Creek'', 1942.
Cason was represented by Kate Walton, one of the first female attorneys in Florida. Cason was reportedly profane indeed (one of her neighbors reported her swearing could be heard for a quarter of a mile), wore pants, had a fascination with guns, and was just as extraordinarily independent as Rawlings. Rawlings won the case and enjoyed a brief vindication, but the verdict was overturned in appellate court, and Rawlings was ordered to pay damages in the amount of one dollar. The toll the case took on Rawlings was great, in both time and emotion. Reportedly, Rawlings had been shocked to learn of Cason's reaction to the book and felt betrayed. After the case was over, she spent less time in Cross Creek and never wrote another book about Florida, though she had been considering doing a sequel to ''Cross Creek.''


GeeChee

In ''Cross Creek'', Rawlings describes how she owns 72 acres of land and also hires several people over the years to help her with day-to-day chores and activities. An entire chapter of the book is dedicated to one woman she hires, whose name was Beatrice but who was affectionately known as "GeeChee", because the woman was ethnically part of the
Geechee The Gullah () are a subgroup of the African American ethnic group, who predominantly live in the Lowcountry region of the U.S. states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida within the coastal plain and the Sea Islands. Their ...
people. In the book, Rawlings says GeeChee's mother lived in nearby Hawthorne and that GeeChee was blind in one eye from a fight in which she had been involved. GeeChee is employed by Rawlings on and off for nearly two years in which GeeChee dutifully makes life easier for Rawlings. GeeChee reveals to Rawlings that her boyfriend named Leroy was serving time in prison for manslaughter and asks Rawlings for help in gaining his release. She arranges for Leroy to be paroled to her and come work for her farm, and she has a wedding on the grounds for Beatrice and Leroy. After a few weeks, Leroy aggressively demands more earnings from Rawlings and threatens her. She decides he must leave, which causes her distress because she does not want GeeChee to go with him. GeeChee eventually decides to stay with Rawlings but then begins to drink heavily and abandons her. Weeks later, Rawlings searches for GeeChee, finds her, and drives her back to the farm, describing GeeChee as a "Black
Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale (; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English Reform movement, social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during th ...
". GeeChee is unable to stop herself from drinking, which leads a heartbroken Rawlings to dismiss her. Rawlings states in her autobiography "No maid of perfection—and now I have one—can fill the strange emptiness she left in a remote corner of my heart. I think of her often, and I know she does of me, for she comes once a year to see me". When ''Cross Creek'' was turned into a 1983 film, actress
Alfre Woodard Alfre Woodard ( ; born November 8, 1952) is an American actress. Known for portraying strong-willed and dignified roles on stage and screen, she has received various accolades, including four Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and three Scree ...
was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress The Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It has been awarded since the 9th Academy Awards to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performanc ...
for her performance as GeeChee.


Personal life

With the money she made from ''The Yearling'', Rawlings bought a beach cottage at Crescent Beach, ten miles south of
St. Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; ; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430) was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa. His writings deeply influenced the development of Western philosop ...
. In 1941, Rawlings married Ocala hotelier Norton Baskin (1901–1997), and he remodeled an old mansion into the Castle Warden Hotel in St. Augustine, which currently houses the
Ripley's Believe it or Not ''Ripley's Believe It or Not!'' is an American franchise founded by Robert Ripley, which deals with bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims. Originally a newspaper panel, the ''Believe It or Not'' ...
Museum. After World War II, he sold the hotel and managed the Dolphin Restaurant at Marineland, which was then Florida's number one tourist attraction. Rawlings and Baskin made their primary home at Crescent Beach, and they continued their respective occupations independently. When a visitor to the Castle Warden Hotel suggested she saw the influence of Rawlings in the decor, Baskin protested, saying, "You do not see Mrs. Rawlings' fine hand in this place. Nor will you see my big foot in her next book. That's our agreement. She writes. I run a hotel."Evans, Harry. "Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Part One", '' The Family Circle''. May 7, 1943: pp 10–11. After purchasing her land in New York, Rawlings spent half the year there and half the year with Baskin in St. Augustine. Her singular admitted vanity was cooking. She said, "I get as much satisfaction from preparing a perfect dinner for a few good friends as from turning out a perfect paragraph in my writing." Rawlings befriended and corresponded with
Mary McLeod Bethune Mary McLeod Bethune (; July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955) was an American educator, Philanthropy, philanthropist, Humanitarianism, humanitarian, Womanism, womanist, and civil rights activist. Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in ...
and
Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on Hoodoo ...
. Hurston visited her at Cross Creek. Despite Rawlings resisting many of the social norms of the time, she still refused to allow Hurston, an African-American, to sleep in her home; instead Hurston was relegated to the tenant house to sleep. While some of Rawlings's views on race relations were very different from her neighbors', she also infantilized African Americans, along with white Southerners, while simultaneously labeling the economic differences between African Americans and whites "a scandal”. She considered whites superior. She described her African-American employee Idella as "the perfect maid". Their relationship is described in the book ''Idella: Marjorie Rawlings' "Perfect Maid"'', by Idella Parker and Mary Keating. Biographers have noted her longing for a male child through her writings, as far back as her first story as a teenage girl in "The Reincarnation of Miss Hetty", and repeated throughout several works, letters, and characters, most notably in ''The Yearling''. In fact, she stated that as a child she had a gift for telling stories but that she demanded all her audiences be boys. Her hatred of cities was intense: she wrote a sonnet titled, "Having Left Cities Behind Me" published in ''Scribner's'' in 1938 to illustrate it (excerpt):
Now, having left cities behind me, turned
Away forever from the strange, gregarious
Huddling of men by stones, I find those various
Great towns I knew fused into one, burned
Together in the fire of my despising ...
She was criticized throughout her career for being uneven with her talent in writing, something she recognized in herself, and that reflected periods of depression and heavy drinking, leading to and exacerbating her artistic frustration. She has been described as having unique sensibilities; she wrote of feeling "vibrations" from the land and often preferred long periods of solitude at Cross Creek. She was known for being remarkably strong-willed, but after her death, Norton Baskin wrote of her: "Marjorie was the shyest person I have ever known. This was always strange to me as she could stand up to anybody in any department of endeavor but time after time when she was asked to go some place or to do something she would accept—'if I would go with her.


Death and legacy

Rawlings died on December 14, 1953, in St. Augustine of a
cerebral hemorrhage Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as hemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain (i.e. the parenchyma), into its ventricles, or into both. An ICH is a type of bleeding within the skull and one kind of stro ...
most likely brought on by her untreated alcoholism and chain smoking. She bequeathed most of her property to the
University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and a preem ...
in Gainesville, where she taught creative writing in Anderson Hall. In return, her name was given to a dormitory dedicated in 1958 as Rawlings Hall. Her land at Cross Creek is now the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park. Baskin survived her by 44 years, passing away in 1997. They are buried side by side at Antioch Cemetery near Island Grove, Florida. Her tombstone, with Baskin's inscription, reads: "Through her writing she endeared herself to the people of the world." Rawlings' reputation has managed to outlive those of many of her contemporaries. A posthumously published children's book, ''
The Secret River ''The Secret River'' is a 2005 historical novel by Kate Grenville about an early 19th-century Englishman transported to Australia for theft. The story explores what might have happened when Europeans colonised land already inhabited by Aborigi ...
'', won a
Newbery Honor The John Newbery Medal, frequently shortened to the Newbery, is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to the author of "the most distinguished contr ...
in 1956, and movies were made long after her death of ''
Gal Young Un ''Gal Young 'Un'' is a 1979 American drama film directed by Victor Nuñez. Plot In the Prohibition era, the late 1920s, in the backwoods country of Florida, Mattie, an independent, middle-aged, pipe-smoking widow, lives alone. She has given up soc ...
'' and '' Cross Creek'' (Baskin made a cameo appearance in ''Cross Creek'' as a man sitting in a rocking chair). In 1986, Rawlings was inducted into the Florida Women's Hall of Fame. In 1989 she won the Florida Folk Heritage Award. In 2008, the
United States Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or simply the Postal Service, is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the executive branch of the federal governmen ...
unveiled a stamp bearing Rawlings's image. She was named a
Great Floridian Great Floridian is a title bestowed on citizens of Florida by the Florida Department of State. There were actually two formal programs. The Great Floridian 2000 program honored deceased individuals who made "significant contributions in the histor ...
in 2009; the program honors persons who made “major contributions to the progress and welfare" of Florida. Several public schools in Florida have been named in her honor, including Rawlings Elementary School in Gainesville, PVPV/Rawlings Elementary School in
Ponte Vedra Beach Ponte, a word meaning ''bridge'' in Italian, Portuguese, and Galician languages, may refer to: Places England *Pontefract, a town in the Metropolitan City of Wakefield France *Ponte Leccia, a civil parish (hameau) in the department of Haute-Cors ...
and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Elementary in
Pinellas Park Pinellas Park is a city located in central Pinellas County, United States. The population was 53,093 at the 2020 census. The city is the fourth largest city in Pinellas County. The City of Pinellas Park was incorporated in 1914. It is part of the ...
.


Works

Short stories * 1912 "The Reincarnation of Miss Hetty" * 1931 "Cracker Chidlins" * 1931 "Jacob's Ladder" (contained in ''When the Whippoorwill'' 940 * 1931 "A Plumb Care Conscience" (contained in ''When the Whippoorwill'' 940 * 1932 "A Crop of Beans" (contained in ''When the Whippoorwill'' 940 * 1932 "Gal Young Un" ( O. Henry Award First Prize for 1932) (contained in ''When the Whippoorwill'' 940 * 1933 "Hyacinth Drift" * 1933 "Alligators" (contained in ''When the Whippoorwill'' 940 * 1933 "Benny and the Bird Dogs" (contained in ''When the Whippoorwill'' 940 * 1934 "The Pardon" (contained in ''When the Whippoorwill'' 940 * 1936 "A Mother in Mannville" (contained in ''When the Whippoorwill'' 940 * 1936 "Varmints" (contained in ''When the Whippoorwill'' 940 * 1938 "Mountain Rain" * 1939 "I Sing While I Cook" (nonfiction) * 1939 "Cocks Must Crow" (contained in ''When the Whippoorwill'' 940 * 1940 "The Pelican's Shadow" * 1940 "The Enemy" (contained in ''When the Whippoorwill'' 940 * 1941 "Jessamine Springs" * 1941 "The Provider" * 1942 "Fanny, You Fool!" * 1944 "Shell" * 1945 "Black Secret" * 1945 "Miriam's Houses" (6-part series based on "A Mother in Mannville") * 1940 "In The Heart" Novels and story collections * 1928 ''Blood of My Blood'' * 1933 ''South Moon Under'' * 1935 ''Golden Apples'' * 1938 ''
The Yearling ''The Yearling'' is a novel by American writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, published in March 1938. It was the main selection of the Book of the Month Club in April 1938. It won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. It was the best-selling ...
'' (adapted to film in 1946) (
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during ...
in 1939) * 1940 ''When the Whippoorwill'' * 1942 ''Cross Creek'' (adapted to film in 1983) * 1942 ''Cross Creek Cookery'' * 1947 "Mountain Prelude" (adapted to film as '' The Sun Comes Up'' in 1950) * 1950 ''Jacob's Ladder'' * 1953 ''The Sojourner'' * 1955 ''
The Secret River ''The Secret River'' is a 2005 historical novel by Kate Grenville about an early 19th-century Englishman transported to Australia for theft. The story explores what might have happened when Europeans colonised land already inhabited by Aborigi ...
'' (
Newbery Honor The John Newbery Medal, frequently shortened to the Newbery, is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to the author of "the most distinguished contr ...
in 1956)


See also

*
Florida literature Florida literature is as varied as the state itself. Genres traditionally include fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and some of it may be considered part of the American regional Southern literature genre. Writers affiliated with the locale of Flor ...


References


External links


A Guide to the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Papers

University of Florida's Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Digital Collections
created from th

* ttps://archives.library.sc.edu/repositories/5/resources/837 Robert Middendorf and Rodger Tarr collections of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlingsat the University of South Carolina Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Cross Creek



Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park

The Friends of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Farm, Inc.

Photos of the first edition of The Yearling
* *

a
Project Gutenberg Australia


(archived) * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan 1896 births 1953 deaths 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century American women writers American women novelists American women short story writers Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Newbery Honor winners Novelists from Florida O. Henry Award winners People from Alachua County, Florida Pulitzer Prize for the Novel winners University of Florida faculty University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni Writers from Washington, D.C.