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Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings:
A Timeline
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| 1896 Born on August 8 in Washington, D.C. to Arthur Frank Kinnan
and Ida May Traphagen Kinnan |
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1907 Marjorie wins a $2.00 prize for a story published in the
Washington Post. She later said that no amount of money or acknowledgement
of her writing, including her 1939 Pulitzer Prize, would mean as much to
her as that $2.00 cash prize. |
1913 Her father dies on January 31, leaving her mother Ida to
care for Marjorie and her younger brother, Arthur Houston. |
| 1914 Upon graduation from Western High School in Washington
D.C., Marjorie moves with her mother and brother to Wisconsin. She
enters the University of Wisconsin as an English major. |
1914-18 During her years at the university, Marjorie
becomes a prominent member of the campus drama society “Red Domino.”
She writes plays and performs in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
She joins Delta Gamma Sorority and Mortar Board, the women’s honor society.
Marjorie graduates with a Bachelor of Arts Degree. She moves to New
York upon graduation and works as editor for the National Board of the
YWCA. |
1919 Marries writer Charles A. Rawlings. They live in
Rochester, N.Y. |
| 1919-28 Marjorie and Charles work as reporters for various newspapers
including Louisville Courier-Journal, Rochester Journal, and United Features
Syndicate. |
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1928 Buys a seventy-two-acre orange grove in Hawthorne, FL which
is known as Cross Creek. Moves there in November and begins to record her
impressions of the countryside and the Florida people she encounters.
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1930 Sells her first two stories to Scribner’s magazine: “Cracker
Chidlings” and “Jacob’s Ladder.” Scribner’s editor, Maxwell Perkins, becomes
her mentor.
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1933 South Moon Under, her first novel is published
and receives critical and popular success. Begins gathering material
for The Yearling while staying with the family of Cal Long (an inspiration
for her novel). Receives the O. Henry Award for “Gal Young ‘Un” -
later to be made into a film directed by Victor Nunez with actors from
the Hippodrome State Theatre. Divorces Charles Rawlings.
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1935 Golden Apples published. Breaks her neck in a fall
from her horse. While recuperating, she develops new material for her upcoming
stories. |
1936 Meets writers Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald,
who have been influences on her writing. Begins writing The Yearling
in a North Carolina mountain cabin. |
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1939 The Yearling receives many honors including the
Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Buys a cottage at Crescent Beach, Florida. |
1940 Publishes When the Whippoorwill and begins work
on Cross Creek. |
1941 Marries Norton Sanford Baskin, owner of Castle Warden Hotel,
St. Augustine. Divides her time between Cross Creek and St. Augustine. |
| 1942 Cross Creek is published and becomes a bestseller.
In August, she publishes Cross Creek Cookery. |
1943 A libel suit is entered against Marjorie by her friend,
Zelma Cason who believes Marjorie’s portrayal of her in Cross Creek
is slanderous. In June Marjorie begins work on The Sojourner, a novel based
on her grandfather Traphagen. |
1946 MGM produces a movie version of The Yearling. Trial
for libel case held in Gainesville.
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1947 Florida Supreme Court directs Mrs. Rawlings to pay Zelma
Cason nominal damages in the Cross Creek libel suit. An old
farmhouse in Van Hornesville, New York becomes Marjorie’s summer home. |
1953 The Sojourner is published and becomes
a Literary Guild selection. Before she finishes her last work, a biography
on Ellen Glasgow, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings dies on December 14 at Crescent
Beach of a cerebral hemorrhage. She is buried in Antioch Cemetery near
Island Grove, Florida.
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