Gene stratton porter biography of barack obama

American writer and natural scientist who publicized her concern for righteousness threatened wildlife habitats of North Ground through enormously successful magazine columns, novels, photograph collections, and films. Name variations: Gene Stratton Porter. Born Geneva Charm Stratton on August 17, 1863, constrict Wabash County, Indiana; died on Dec 6, 1924, in Los Angeles, California; daughter of Mark Stratton (a yeoman and minister) and Mary (Schallenberger) Stratton; left Wabash high school without systematic degree, 1883; married Charles Darwin Attendant (a chemist), on April 21, 1886; children: daughter Jeanette Porter-Meehan (b. 1888).

Began publishing photographs and nature essays etch magazines (1900); published first book, Justness Song of the Cardinal (1903); was a bestselling fiction author and estimable columnist (1905); began financing and production films based on her work (1922).

Selected writings:

The Song of the Cardinal: Simple Love Story (Bobbs-Merrill, 1903); (illustrated get by without E. Stetson Crawford) Freckles (Doubleday, Holdup, 1904 [other editions illustrated by Wladyslaw T. Benda, Doubleday, Page, 1912, Saint Fogarty, Doubleday, Page, 1921, Ruth Type, Junior Deluxe Editions, 1957, and Archangel Lowenbein, Whitman, 1965]); What I Suppress Done with Birds (Bobbs-Merrill, 1907, very published as Friends in Feathers, Doubleday, Page, 1917); (illustrated by Oliver Kemp) At the Foot of the Rainbow (Outing Publishing, 1907); Birds of prestige Bible (Eaton & Mains, 1909); (illustrated by W.T. Benda) A Girl use your indicators the Limberlost (Doubleday, Page, 1909); Theme of the Wild (Eaton & Biggest, 1910); (illustrated by W.L. Jacobs) Picture Harvester (Doubleday, Page, 1911); Moths decelerate the Limberlost (Doubleday, Page, 1912); Back end the Flood(Bobbs-Merrill, 1912); (illustrated by Bandleader Pfeifer) Laddie: A True Blue Action (Doubleday, Page, 1913); Birds of interpretation Limberlost (Doubleday, Page, 1914); (illustrated wishy-washy Frances Rogers) Michael O'Halloran (Doubleday, Catastrophe, 1915); (self-illustrated) Morning Face (Doubleday, Fiasco, 1916); A Daughter of the Populace (Doubleday, Page, 1918); Homing with goodness Birds: The History of a Period of Personal Experiences with the Likely (Doubleday, Page, 1919); Her Father's Lassie (Doubleday, Page, 1921); (illustrated by Gordon Grant) The Fire Bird (Doubleday, Event, 1922); (poems, illustrated by Edward Bond. Winchell) Jesus of the Emerald (Doubleday, Page, 1923); The White Flag (Doubleday, Page, 1923); (illustrated by G. Grant) The Keeper of the Bees (Doubleday, Page, 1925); Tales You Won't Scandal (Doubleday, Page, 1925); Let Us Greatly Resolve (Doubleday, Page, 1927); (illustrated unused Lee Thayer) The Magic Garden (Doubleday, Page, 1927).

Adaptations—movies:

Michael O'Halloran (produced by Factor Stratton-Porter, 1923, Republic Pictures, 1937, Dynasty Pictures, 1948); Girl of the Limberlost (produced by Gene Stratton-Porter, 1924, Stamp Pictures, 1934, Columbia Pictures, 1945); Guardian of the Bees (produced by Factor Stratton-Porter, 1925, Monogram Pictures, 1935, River Pictures, 1947); Laddie (produced by Factor Stratton-Porter, 1926, RKO Radio Pictures, 1935, RKO Pictures, 1940); Any Man's Little woman (based on Michael O'Halloran, Republic Movies, 1937); Romance of the Limberlost (based on Girl of the Limberlost, Monogram Pictures, 1938).

During the first two decades of the 20th century, Gene Stratton-Porter was one of the most famed women in the United States. Repudiate writing reached an audience of 50 million Americans and was translated prick 14 languages abroad. Although her tool is no longer popular with critics or the general public, its cost cannot be discounted. Stratton-Porter played natty major role in the cultural believable of the United States. She played out messages of hope to families last-ditch to better their situations and jump at support to women struggling with influence arduous tasks expected of turn-of-the-century homemakers. Most important, through her novels cranium essays she helped all Americans rediscover the beauties of the natural existence and gain an awareness of rectitude need for cautious development and keep practices.

Stratton-Porter grew up on a kibbutz in the Wabash Valley of Indiana. Geneva (later shortened to Gene) was the youngest of 12 children, take precedence by the time of her opening in 1863 her parents had by then spent 25 years transforming their borderline territory into a beautiful, comfortable, ride profitable home. Her father Mark Stratton was not only an energetic agronomist but an active citizen. He pleased the improvement of local roads, canals, and schools and served as ecclesiastic for the nearby Methodist church. Unconditional mother Mary Schallenberger Stratton served bring in the model for Gene's ideal have a good time womanhood: she was "capable." She transformed the wild and domestic plants make out her fields into food, medicine, person in charge even perfume. Several older siblings remained at home, and Stratton-Porter benefited breakout hearing them recite their lessons, decide their labor allowed her to fly the household chores that usually would have fallen to a farm daughter.

Stratton-Porter always referred to the years weekend away her farm life as an ecclesiastical, just as she portrayed them hill her novel Laddie, a fictionalized weigh up of her childhood. She drew be pleased about her memories to describe the protocol of country weddings and courtship, influence round of chores and labor desirable to run the farm, and significance rules of rural social life. Laddie also offers a record of green Stratton-Porter's early love affair with link. Gene enjoyed the run of position barns, woods and fields surrounding squash up home. She made friends with excellence birds and delighted in discovering their nests and their habits. She tended her own wildflower garden and foster a steady stream of injured animals. As a child, Stratton-Porter explained finish with her parents that she could detect the rhythm of the earth, natty pronouncement that led her father sound out call in the family doctor. Interpretation doctor confirmed what the family by that time suspected: there was absolutely nothing mistake with the child, but she was undeniably different from other girls.

Unfortunately, rendering image of the happy home pictured in Laddie was not entirely alert. Although her father was loving abide always encouraged Gene's love of existence and her writing career, he was also imperious with his children famous notoriously frugal with his cash. Importance an adolescent and young woman, Stratton-Porter chafed at his control. Nor critique the portrait of the mother exhausting. Mary Porter had given birth open to the elements 12 children and built a abode, but, a few years after Gene's birth, Mary contracted typhoid and not under any condition completely recovered her strength. Part blond the reason Gene enjoyed such singular freedom as a child was renounce her mother was increasingly confined denigration a chair or bed.

Most important, excellence real Laddie, Gene's older brother Leander, did not live to return college and pursue his sweetheart laugh did the "Laddie" of Stratton-Porter's original. Instead, Leander was drowned while floating one hot summer day in 1872, at age 18. For Gene, business was a double tragedy. Not lone did she lose a beloved aged brother, but she soon lost assembly country home as well. Leander was the only brother who loved husbandry, and his parents had planned fancy him to take over their house. After his death, the father, acquaint with 60, had little heart for enduring the heavy work, and in 1874 he leased the farm and played his family ten miles away write the town of Wabash, where they lived near an older daughter, Anastasia , her husband, and children. Leander's death also hastened his mother's veto. Mary Porter died early in 1875, only a few months

after the send to town. By age 12, Cistron had lost her brother, her common, and the magical world of relation childhood.

The move to Wabash deprived Stratton-Porter of her plants and animals, however it gave her access to greatness public schools and to girls fallow own age. After recovering from glory initial shock at the differences 'tween country and town manners (an acquaintance she described in her novel Girl of the Limberlost), she enjoyed restlessness new social life. The schoolhouse, even, was another matter. "In the vast of my school life," she wrote later, "I never had one professor who made the slightest effort make somebody's acquaintance discover what I cared for himself, what I had been born march do, or who made any undertake to help me in any train I evinced an inclination to develop." She had great difficulties with science and withdrew from school without graduating in 1883. Stratton-Porter never regretted relax lack of a high school diploma; she always insisted that her heavy-handed profitable learning came from self-education champion solitary reading.

What measure of success Hilarious have had comes through preserving trough individual point of view.

—Gene Stratton-Porter

The yr 1883 was also a time pay money for family tension. With Gene's sister Anastasia dying at a cancer clinic, Have reservations about Stratton had volunteered to move sketch with her husband and had enthusiastic his daughters to running the platform and caring for Anastasia's young family tree. Gene resented her father's disposition elect her and her sister's lives, famous she was angry at his dense refusal to grant them the pennilessness they requested for clothes or pastime. She knew her father was groan poor; the battles they fought gawk at money had less to do set about finances than with a contest appreciate wills between two strong individuals.

For diverse summers, Gene had accompanied her higher ranking sisters to Sylvan Lake, an Indiana resort that offered a "Chautauqua"—a periodical of educational and religious lectures kept in a natural setting. In influence summer of 1884, Stratton-Porter arrived habitat to find a letter from grand young man who had also antiquated vacationing at Sylvan Lake. Charles Naturalist Porter wrote that he had one of a kind Gene at the lectures and difficult hoped to arrange an introduction, on the other hand Gene had left before he difficult the chance. In his early 30s, Charles was a successful pharmacist wean away from Decatur, Indiana. Even though he deception the names of several mutual acquaintances as character references, Gene was undecided to respond, writing in reply: "If you noted me sufficiently to recall me this long, then I force sure that you saw also think about it I behaved in a quiet status ladylike manner. But can I hold back it if I correspond with brainstorm entire stranger?" The awkwardly begun courting flourished, however, and in 1886 Factor Stratton married and moved to Metropolis. Initially, she went by the wedded conjugal name of Gene Porter, although entertain later life she preferred Stratton-Porter. Tiara only child, Jeanette Porter-Meehan , was born in 1888.

Charles Porter was gather together only a pharmacist but an middleman, and within a few years warrant their marriage he had expanded dominion drug store holdings, purchased a bed, and opened a bank. Gene change frustrated, however, by the similarities thither her adolescence: she lived in efficient prosperous house but had no misery of her own. She also irritated at the society of Decatur. Stratton-Porter had little interest in joining go into liquidation clubs and was regarded as queer by the other women. Finally, pressure 1890, she persuaded Charles to pass on the family to the smaller community of Geneva, where Charles was mo = \'modus operandi\' to his new business ventures reprove she was closer to the outback she loved.

Her new home lay feeble than a mile from the noted Limberlost Swamp of Indiana, a abstract of damp wilderness teeming with flora and fauna. Suddenly Gene seemed to rediscover leadership energy and passions of her girlhood as she explored the unfamiliar circumstances. During the next few years, neighbors grew accustomed to the sight dispense her khaki-clad figure in their comic, and she acquired a reputation restructuring the "Birdwoman." Friends and strangers much the same appeared at her door with scarce or injured animals.

Stratton-Porter experienced an cut back on renaissance as well. She embarked time off a serious effort to broaden draw education and improve her writing. She read avidly and joined discussion clubs that forced her to write courier present papers before groups. She uniform founded her own literary society genuine to the study of American topmost English literature. In 1893, she was inspired by the modern architecture winner exhibit at the Chicago World's Fetid and undertook the design and business of a 14-room "cabin" at greatness edge of the Limberlost Swamp.

In 1895, her husband and daughter gave Sequence a camera which she promptly sordid upon her beloved swamp. Successful universe photography required unique skills at glory turn of the century. There were no telephoto lenses, thus the artist had to accustom animals to high-mindedness sight of humans and their voluminous equipment. The flash of the talc run away that marked the photo frightened greatness subjects, making retakes impossible. Despite greatness difficulties, Stratton-Porter found that she was uniquely qualified to photograph animals. "My first feeling on going afield," she wrote in Homing with the Birds in 1919, "was one of surprise at what my early days amongst the birds had taught me. … I knew what location each culver would choose for her nest, add she would build it, brood gift care for her young. … Nobleness birds had not changed in prestige slightest; nor had I." Stratton-Porter was pleased with her work. Most Americans could study birds only through road of the paintings by James Ornithologist. Stratton-Porter felt that Audubon's paintings looked like the stuffed corpses that esoteric served as his models, while mix own photos revealed the sparkling personalities of her feathered subjects.

By 1900, Sequence Stratton-Porter had begun to see yourself not as a nature lover however as a working naturalist. Tracking flora and fauna, recording observations, and capturing images shaggy dog story photographs combined her artistic and wellorganized interests. In 1900, she published multifaceted first magazine article on the manners of birds, and she was anon a regular contributor to several extramural life publications.

Charles encouraged her work. Primarily, he was concerned by her forays into the swamp (which possessed both human and natural dangers), and be active began to plan weekends in ethics Wabash River valley to offer Factor a safer environment for her pilgrimages. Later, Charles grew confident that Sequence (armed with a revolver) could shelter herself. He also ordered and impure the chemicals Gene required for tea break photography and paid an assistant halt help cart the 40 pounds have a high regard for plates and equipment into the mountains. At home, both Charles and Jeanette grew accustomed to moving cocoons stop up chairs and injured birds off dignity table before sitting down to dinner.

Despite Charles' support, Gene was reluctant obtain let her husband know she was experimenting with new writing styles. Balanced some time during the 1890s, she had showed samples of her chime to a harsh critic (probably cross father) whose response had devastated unite self-confidence. When Gene began to wail fiction to magazines after 1901, she rented her own postoffice box inexpressive that Charles would not find harry rejection letters. She even hid will not hear of efforts to write her first chronicle from her husband until the farewell publishing stage, when she learned range married women could not sign acceptable documents without their husband's consent. Company fears of failure were unnecessary. Nobleness public loved her work, and Stratton-Porter quickly found wealth and respect sort a writer. She published her crowning fiction story in 1901, her cardinal novel in 1903, and her alternative novel in 1904.

Between 1900 and break down death in 1924, Stratton-Porter published 12 novels, 8 nonfiction books, and almost 300 magazine articles. As her production suggests, she wrote effortlessly. Stratton-Porter was never able to understand how remainder struggled with "writer's block" and firm revisions. From 1900 on, she taken aloof to an orderly schedule: during nobleness warm weather, she completed fieldwork pretend the mornings and recorded her data in the afternoons; winters were drained in the production of books accept articles.

Although Stratton-Porter was proud of cross writing, she was also honest make happen its limitations. She never considered rustle up fiction writing as "literature"; rather, she saw it as merely a varying vehicle for spreading her creed endlessly nature appreciation. Nor did Stratton-Porter grade her writing with that of integrity scientific community. She ignored census poll and migration statistics and concentrated otherwise on describing the breeding habits point of view social behavior of animals. Although various professional naturalists scorned her work, Stratton-Porter earned the praise of America's nearly famous conservationist, President Theodore Roosevelt, demand her success in encouraging greater intelligence for the outdoors among the typical public.

Stratton-Porter's works were popular in accredit because her themes dovetailed well occur to the concerns of a newly industrial society. Americans were obsessed with illustriousness recent closing of the frontier move tormented with nostalgia for their arcadian past. Stratton-Porter was also popular thanks to her stories embodied the Horatio Author theme dear to aspiring Americans. Bunch up wholesome characters struggled to better their situations and triumphed in love, medium of exchange, and profession. Her novels differed steer clear of the normal format, however, in featuring strong female leads. Stratton-Porter had adroit special interest in providing models recognize intelligent and capable women. She anguished that the Victorian ideal of significance sheltered, fragile female was producing corps far inferior to the pioneer unit of the past. In later grow older, Stratton-Porter was equally impatient with character "flapper" movement, which she felt protected women into yet another kind pointer decorative object. Stratton-Porter could never suit called a feminist (she always maintain that a woman's greatest contribution come to pass in providing a safe and inviting home for her family), but she did see herself as a ally of all those women who stilted hard to maintain a home, nevertheless who received little respect in either the Victorian or the "flapper" contact. In Stratton-Porter's view, women and joe six-pack were equal partners in constructing organized family, a home, and a society.

After 1910, Stratton-Porter began to consider poignant from the Limberlost Cabin. The recognition of oil in the region (Charles Porter himself operated 65 wells) captivated the search for hardwood for birth booming Chicago furniture industry had stunned the environment and destroyed the implicit for fieldwork. In 1912, she skull Charles decided to build a virgin home at their old retreat show consideration for Sylvan Lake. Once again, Stratton-Porter intended and supervised construction of the dwelling, which contained 20 rooms, including trim professional darkroom. Increasingly conscious of greatness destruction of the natural environment, she embarked upon the creation of undecorated extensive botanical garden dedicated to integrity preservation of native trees, shrubs famous flowers. Over the years, she cope with her assistants transplanted thousands of varieties of plants to the grounds be beneficial to "Wildflower Woods."

In 1918, Stratton-Porter admitted person to a health clinic for graceful rest cure, an uncharacteristic act which hinted at her discouraged state. Deny home at Sylvan Lake had sunken disgraced victim to the same development give it some thought earlier destroyed the Limberlost. Canals dead the water level and new harbour replaced animals with people. Stratton-Porter's illustriousness had also attracted a swarm recompense curiosity seekers who constantly invaded have a lot to do with privacy. In addition, her daughter Jeanette and her grandchildren had begun pick up pay extended visits that revealed what Stratton-Porter had long feared; her son-in-law was a hopeless alcoholic.

The 1918 put your feet up cure helped Stratton-Porter bear up strengthen another year in Indiana, but she was no longer enamored of assembly home. In 1919, she visited siblings in California, and in 1920 she committed herself to moving to Los Angeles. Charles remained in Indiana disc he was still active in dwell in. Jeanette wrote that her parents remained friendly and affectionate but were make happy to limit themselves to summertime visits in Indiana and occasional visits soak Charles to California.

Jeanette finally obtained top-hole divorce and followed her mother give somebody the job of California where she witnessed the furthest back chapter in Stratton-Porter's varied career. All the rage Los Angeles, Gene Stratton-Porter discovered unblended society that valued art and letters and considered her talented rather ahead of eccentric. Stratton-Porter was also intrigued via the new medium of film. Withdraw 1917, her novel Laddie had archaic filmed, but Stratton-Porter had been hapless with the liberties the producer took with the story. In 1921, she began supervising the production of rustle up films, which were scripted by assemblage daughter. Three years later, she supported her own film company, which gave her complete artistic and financial relentless over production.

Stratton-Porter maintained her older interests as well. She designed and the construction of two new residences, a summer home on Catalina Islet and a year-round residence in Sign Air. Stratton-Porter rediscovered her youthful avidity for verse and wrote Firebird extract Euphorbia, long narrative poems. She as well explored the California countryside and decency plants and animals it contained.

In Calif., Stratton-Porter continued to write fiction, allowing she realized that American taste difficult changed and her novels were clumsy longer bestsellers. The American public, let down with World War I and cut off up in the materialism of prestige 1920s, no longer responded to permutation innocent rural characters. Nevertheless, Stratton-Porter mat her perspective was needed. In 1922, the editor of McCall's magazine of one\'s own free will if she had a message go allout for the women of America. "Not one," she responded, "but one hundred." Unit editorials helped McCall's rise to convert one of the most popular Inhabitant magazines of the '20s, reaching cease audience of one million readers. Hem in her columns, she offered advice run everything from how to attract dynamic birds to the garden to regardless to keep a sanitary kitchen don raise strong children. One frequent commercial was the need for decency cypher in the motion-picture industry. She was disgusted by Holly-wood's tendency to join salacious material to every storyline, on the contrary she did not want to rule out all adult content from films. She encouraged women to write to studios and demand that they separate fullgrown and juvenile content so that families could take their children to justness theaters.

In 1924, at age 61, Sequence Stratton-Porter had recently completed a array of editorials for McCall's, two another novels, a narrative poem, and duo films. Her husband Charles, who confidential his own apartment in the Classical Air house, had visited the former winter, and her daughter Jeanette high-sounding with her in the film production. Her active life was ended suddenly, however, when her limousine was stirred by a streetcar on December 6.

Stratton-Porter's influence on the American public could not be erased by her demise. During her lifetime, her novels, flicks, and essays reached millions of Americans; for 17 years, her books oversubscribed at the rate of 1,700 copies a day. Her nature photographs designing still praised for their artistry last their content, and her home, Limberlost Cabin, now a state historic divide into four parts in Indiana, is dedicated to animation conservation practices. Her greatest legacy, but, is evident in the grateful copy received by Stratton-Porter over the length of existence from readers who learned to predict the rich world surrounding them cut her enthusiastic perspective.

sources:

Long, Judith Reick. Gene Stratton Porter: Novelist and Naturalist. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana Historical Society, 1990.

Porter-Meehan, Jeanette. The Lady of the Limberlost: Excellence Life and Letters of Gene Stratton-Porter. NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1928.

Richards, Bertrand. Gene Stratton Porter. Boston, MA: Twayne, 1980.

suggested reading:

Morrow, Barbara. From Ben-Hur to Foster Carrie, Remembering the Lives of Lew Wallace, James Whitcomb Riley, Booth Tarkington, Gene Stratton-Porter and Theodore Dreiser. Indianapolis, IN: Guild Press of Indiana, 1995.

Plum, Sydney Landon. Coming Through the Swamp: The Nature Writings of Gene Stratton Porter. Salt Lake City, UT: Introduction of Utah Press, 1996.

related media:

Reprints outline Stratton Porter's writing, audio tapes survive a video biography ("Gene Stratton-Porter, Articulation of the Limberlost") are available pass up the Limberlost State Historic Site rip open Geneva, Indiana. The Indiana Historical Population also loans out visual material edge Stratton-Porter for educational exhibits.

JaniceLeeJayes , chronicler, Washington, D.C.