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Margaret Wise Brown

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"Timothy Hay" redirects here. For the plant, see Timothy-grass.
Margaret Wise Brown
Margaret Wise Brown
Margaret Wise Brown
BornMay 23, 1910
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
DiedNovember 13, 1952(1952-11-13) (aged 42)
Nice, France
Pen nameTimothy Hay
Golden MacDonald
Juniper Sage (with Edith Thacher Hurd)
Kaintuck Brown
OccupationWriter, editor
NationalityAmerican
EducationDana Hall School, 1926
Alma materHollins College, 1932
GenreChildren's literature
Notable works
PartnerBlanche Oelrichs
James Stillman Rockefeller, Jr.

Margaret Wise Brown (May 23, 1910 – November 13, 1952) was a prolific American writer of children's books, including the picture books Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, both illustrated by Clement Hurd.

Biography

The middle child of three whose parents suffered from an unhappy marriage, Brown was born in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York,[1] granddaughter of Benjamin Gratz Brown. In 1923 she attended boarding school in Switzerland, while her parents were living in Canterbury, Connecticut. She began attending Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1926, where she did well in athletics. After graduation in 1928, Brown went on to Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia.

Following her graduation with a B.A. in English[1] from Hollins in 1932 Brown worked as a teacher and also studied art. While working at the Bank Street Experimental School in New York City she started writing books for children. Her first was When the Wind Blew, published in 1937 by Harper & Brothers.

Brown went on to develop her Here and Now stories, and later the Noisy Book series while employed as an editor at W. R. Scott.[when?] From 1944 to 1946, Doubleday published three picture books written by Brown under the pseudonym Golden MacDonald and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. (Weisgard was a runner-up for the Caldecott Medal in 1946, and he won the 1947 Medal, for Little Lost Lamb and The Little Island. Two more of their collaborations appeared in 1953 and 1956, after Brown's death.) The Little Fisherman, illustrated by Dahlov Ipcar, was published in 1945. The Little Fur Family, illustrated by Garth Williams, was published in 1946. Early in the 1950s she wrote several books for the Little Golden Books series, including The Color Kittens, Mister Dog, and Scuppers The Sailor Dog.

While at Hollins she was briefly engaged.[2] She dated, for some time, an unknown "good, quiet man from Virginia",[3] had a long running affair with William Gaston,[4][5] and had a summer romance with Preston Schoyer.[6] In the summer of 1940 Brown began a long-term relationship with Blanche Oelrichs (nom de plume Michael Strange), poet/playwright, actress, and the former wife of John Barrymore. The relationship, which began as a mentoring one, eventually became romantic, and included co-habitating at 10 Gracie Square in Manhattan beginning in 1943.[7] Strange, who was twenty years Brown's senior, died in 1950.

Brown went by various nicknames in different circles of friends. To her Dana School and Hollins friends she was "Tim", as her hair was the color of timothy hay.[8] To Bank Street friends she was "Brownie".[9] To William Gaston she was "Goldie", in keeping with the use of Golden MacDonald as author of The Little Island.[5]

In 1952, Brown met James Stillman 'Pebble' Rockefeller Jr. at a party, and they became engaged. Later that year, while on a book tour in Nice, France, she unexpectedly died at 42 of an embolism, shortly after suffering from appendicitis. Kicking up her leg to show the doctor how well she was feeling ironically caused a blood clot that had formed in her leg to dislodge and travel to her heart.[10]

By the time of Brown's death, she had authored well over one hundred books. Her ashes were scattered at her island home, "The Only House" in Vinalhaven, Maine.[10]

Legacy

Brown bequeathed the royalties to many of her books including Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny to Albert Clarke, the son of a neighbor who was nine years old when she died. In 2000, reporter Joshua Prager detailed in The Wall Street Journal the troubled life of Mr. Clarke, who has squandered the millions of dollars the books have earned him and who believes that Wise Brown was his mother, a claim others dismiss.[11]

Brown left behind over 70 unpublished manuscripts. After unsuccessfully trying to sell them, her sister Roberta Brown Rauch kept them in a cedar trunk for decades. In 1991, Amy Gary of WaterMark Inc., rediscovered the paper-clipped bundles, more than 500 typewritten pages in all, and set about getting the stories published.[12]

Many of Brown's books have been re-issued with new illustrations decades after their original publication. Many more of her books are still in print with the original illustrations. Her books have been translated into several languages; biographies on Brown for children have been written by Leonard S. Marcus (Harper Paperbacks, 1999) and Jill C. Wheeler (Checkerboard Books, 2006). There is a Freudian analysis of her "classic series" of bunny books by Claudia H. Pearson, Have a Carrot (Look Again Press, 2010).[13]

Selected works

Big Red Barn (reissue), illustrated by Felicia Bond

During her lifetime, Brown essentially had four publishers: Harper & Brothers, W. R. Scott, Doubleday, and Little Golden Books. The books written for Doubleday were published under the pseudonym "Golden MacDonald". All were unpaged picture books illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. Two appeared after her death.

  • When the Wind Blew, illus. Rosalie Slocum (Harper & Brothers, 1937)
  • Bumble Bugs and Elephants: a Big and Little Book, illus. Clement Hurd (W. R. Scott, 1938)
  • The Little Fireman, illus. Esphyr Slobodkina (W. R. Scott, 1938)
  • Noisy Book series
    • The Noisy Book, illus. Leonard Weisgard (W. R. Scott, 1939)
    • The Country Noisy Book, illus. Leonard Weisgard (W. R. Scott, 1940)
    • The Seashore Noisy Book, illus. Leonard Weisgard (W. R. Scott, 1941)
    • The Indoor Noisy Book, illus. Leonard Weisgard (W. R. Scott, 1942)
    • The Winter Noisy Book, illus. Charles Green Shaw (W. R. Scott, 1947)
    • The Quiet Noisy Book, illus. Leonard Weisgard (Harper, 1950)
    • The Summer Noisy Book, illus. Leonard Weisgard (Harper, 1951)
  • The Runaway Bunny, illus. Clement Hurd (Harper, 1942)
  • Don't Frighten the Lion, illus. H. A. Rey (Harper, 1942)
  • Big Dog, Little Dog, illus. Leonard Weisgard (Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1943) ‡
  • Horses, illus. Dorothy F. Wagstaff (Harper, 1944), as by "Timothy Hay" and "Wag", OCLC 5047734
  • Red Light Green Light, illus. Leonard Weisgard (Doubleday, 1944) ‡
  • A Child's Good Night Book , illus. Jean Charlot (W. R. Scott, 1944)
  • They All Saw It, illus. Ylla (Harper, 1944)
  • The Little Fisherman, illus. Dahlov Ipcar (W. R. Scott, 1945)
  • Little Lost Lamb, illus. Leonard Weisgard (Doubleday, 1945) ‡
  • The Little Island, illus. Leonard Weisgard (Doubleday, 1946) ‡
  • Little Fur Family, illus. Garth Williams (Harper, 1946)
  • The Man in the Manhole and the Fix-It Men, illus. Bill Ballantine (New York: W. R. Scott, 1946), written by Brown and Edith Thacher Hurd[citation needed] as "Juniper Sage", OCLC 1698467
  • Goodnight Moon, illus. Clement Hurd (Harper, 1947)
  • The Golden Egg Book, illus. Leonard Weisgard (Little Golden Books, 1947)
  • The Sleepy Little Lion, illus. Ylla (Harper, 1947)
  • The Important Book, illus. Leonard Weisgard (Harper, 1949)
  • The Little Cowboy, illus. Esphyr Slobodkina (W. R. Scott, 1948)
  • The Little Farmer, illus. Esphyr Slobodkina (W. R. Scott, 1948)
  • Wait till the Moon is Full, illus. Garth Williams (Harper, 1948)
  • The Color Kittens, illus. Alice and Martin Provensen (Little Golden Books, 1949)
  • My World, illus. Clement Hurd (Harper, 1949)
  • O Said the Squirrel, illus. Ylla (London: Harvill Press, 1950)
  • Fox Eyes, illus. Garth Williams (Pantheon Books, 1951)
  • The Duck, illus. Ylla (Harper; Harvill, 1952)
  • Mister Dog: The Dog Who Belonged to Himself, illus. Garth Williams (Little Golden Books, 1952)

Published posthumously

  • Little Frightened Tiger, illus. Leonard Weisgard (Doubleday, 1953) ‡
  • Scuppers The Sailor Dog, illus. Garth Williams (Little Golden Books, 1953)
  • Big Red Barn, illus. Rosella Hartman (W. R. Scott, 1954) — re-issued by HarperCollins in 1989 illus. Felicia Bond
  • Three Little Animals, illus. Garth Williams (Harper, 1956)
  • Home for a Bunny, illus. Garth Williams (Golden Press, 1956)
  • Whistle for the Train, illus. Leonard Weisgard (Doubleday, 1956) ‡
  • Sleepy ABC, illus. Esphyr Slobodkina (HarperCollins, 1994)
  • Another Important Book, illus. Christopher Raschka (Joanna Cotler Books, 1999)
  • The Fierce Yellow Pumpkin, illus. Richard Egielski (HarperCollins, 2003)
  • Goodnight Songs (Sterling Children's Books, 2013)
  • Goodnight Songs: a Celebration of the Seasons (Sterling Children's Books, 2015)
  • The Find It Book, illus. Lisa Sheehan (Parragon, 2015)

‡ Published as by "Golden MacDonald."

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Margaret Wise Brown". de Grummond Children's Literature Collection. University of Southern Mississippi. June 2003. Retrieved 2013-06-25. With Biographical Sketch.
  2. ^ Marcus, 32.
  3. ^ Marcus, 77.
  4. ^ Marcus, 97–98, 114, 136.
  5. ^ a b Gaston, 152.
  6. ^ Marcus, 147–48.
  7. ^ Marcus, pp. 167–78, 251.
  8. ^ Marcus, 23.
  9. ^ Marcus, 62.
  10. ^ a b "Biography of Margaret Wise Brown" (Long Bio)". Margaret Wise Brown: writer of songs and nonsense. Margaretwisebrown.com. Retrieved 2012-07-06.
  11. ^ Prager, Joshua. "Runaway Money: A Children's Classic, A 9-Year-Old-Boy And a Fateful Bequest – For Albert Clarke, the Rise Of 'Goodnight Moon' Is No Storybook Romance – Broken Homes, Broken Noses". The Wall Street Journal, September 8, 2000. Retrieved 2016-03-21.
  12. ^ "Pop Culture News: A Trunkful of Treasures: Margaret Wise Brown's Manuscripts". Entertainment Weekly #88 (Oct. 18, 1991). Retrieved 2008-11-23.
  13. ^ Have a Carrot: Oedipal Theory and Symbolism in Margaret Wise Brown's Runaway Bunny Trilogy. Birmingham, AL: Look Again Press. 2010. ISBN 978-1-4524-5500-6.
Citations
  • "Beyond the Top 50: Toddler Tales", USA Today (September 12, 1996).
  • "Brown, Margaret Wise 1910-1952". Something About the Author vol. 100 (1999), pp. 35–39.
  • Churnin, Nancy. "Goodnight and Sweet Dreams", The Dallas Morning News (January 5, 2001).
  • Fleischman, John. "Shakespeare of the Sandbox Set", Parents vol. 63 (July 1988), pp. 92–96.
  • Gaston, Bibi. The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries, and Her Granddaughter's Search for Home, William Morrow (2008). ISBN 978-0-06-085770-7
  • Groth, Chuck. "An Heirloom for Fans of Goodnight Moon", St. Louis Post-Dispatch (February 19, 1995).
  • Hurd, Clement. "Remembering Margaret Wise Brown", Horn Book (October 1983).
  • Marcus, Leonard S., Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon, Beacon Press (February 1992). ISBN 978-0-8070-7048-2
  • Mitchell, Lucy Sprague Mitchell. "Margaret Wise Brown, 1910-1952", Bank Street (1953).
  • Pate, Nancy. "Good Gosh: Goodnight Moon is 50", Orlando Sentinel (February 24, 1997).
  • Pearson, Claudia (2010). Have a Carrot: Oedipal Theory and Symbolism in Margaret Wise Brown's Runaway Bunny Trilogy. Look Again Press. ISBN 978-1-4524-5500-6.
  • Pichey, Martha. "Bunny Dearest", Vanity Fair (December 2000), pp. 172–87.
Margaret Wise Brown Festival 2011–2012 at Hollins University [dead link‍]
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