Picture of author.

Barbara Newhall Follett

Autor(a) de The House Without Windows

8 Works 126 Membros 3 Críticas

About the Author

Includes the name: Barbara Newhall Follett

Image credit: www.farksolia.org/

Obras por Barbara Newhall Follett

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Data de nascimento
1914-03-14
Data de falecimento
1939-12-07 (date of disappearance)
Sexo
female
Nacionalidade
USA
Local de nascimento
Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
Locais de residência
New York, New York, USA
Brookline, Massachusetts, USA
Educação
at home
Ocupações
novelist
Relações
Follett, Wilson (father)
Follett, Helen Thomas (mother)

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Barbara Newhall Follett was born in Hanover, New Hampshire. Her parents were Wilson Follett, a critic and editor at the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house, and his wife Helen Thomas Follett, a children's writer. Barbara was home-schooled and was considered a child prodigy. She was writing poetry by age four, and by age eight had begun writing a novel. This book, The House Without Windows, was published with the help and guidance of her father in 1927, when she was 12 years old. It was acclaimed by critics at The New York Times, the Saturday Review, and other publications. Two years later, it was followed by The Voyage of the Norman D., a novel about sailing based on her own experiences aboard a schooner to Nova Scotia. Despite her literary success, she reportedly became depressed after her father abandoned her mother and the family fell on hard financial times during the Great Depression. Barbara and her mother moved to New York City, where she got a job as a secretary at age 16. She wrote several more manuscripts, including the novel-length Lost Island. In 1933, she married Nickerson Rogers and traveled with him throughout Europe and the USA before settling in Brookline, Massachusetts. According to her husband, on December 7, 1939, she left their apartment after a quarrel, after which she was never seen again.

Membros

Críticas

About a girl who disappears into the forest.A bit of an unsettling book as the author disappeared mysteriously herself....
 
Assinalado
Litrvixen | 2 outras críticas | Jun 23, 2022 |
As recently as 48 hours ago, I had never heard of this book or author. I stumbled across her while procrastinatingly surfing Youtube and watching a video on famous people who disappeared. Barbara Newhall Follett was a child prodigy who first wrote this book at the age of 9 on her father's typewriter, with no intention of its being published. The typescript was tragically destroyed in a house fire, recreated from memory, and published in 1927 when the author was 12. It is a beautiful story of childlike innocence, which could have been written only by a young child. Eepersip (I don't know how the author came up with this odd name) runs away from her parents' house to live in nature, making friends with animals and living on berries and roots - this description might make the novel sound either twee or ridiculous, but this is beautifully written, full of the joys of the natural world as seen through the eyes of an introverted child for whom the benefits of teenage and adult civilisation are as yet a mystery, and solitude in nature an ideal to be attained. The author's own (presumably) short life was deeply troubled - her father abandoned the family a couple of years after the book's publication (by which time she had published another novel), and she and her mother faced poverty, against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Later, after an initially happy marriage where she and her husband travelled widely together and she wrote, but never published, two more books, she discovered that he was having an affair, and on 7 December 1939, after an argument, she walked out of their home and was never seen again. There has been much speculation about her trying to relive Eepersip's experience, but it seems more likely to me that she committed suicide following depression, perhaps unable to cope with the sense of abandonment she felt, being a highly sensitive person with a rich inner intellectual and spiritual life, clashing with the hard realities of human relationships. But we will never know for sure.… (mais)
1 vote
Assinalado
john257hopper | 2 outras críticas | Sep 12, 2018 |
I first sought out The House Without Windows because of the unique circumstances and character of its author. The command of language - not just vocabulary and syntax but the cadence of passages and the progression of plot - is remarkable if 9 year old Barbara did write it. And I'd like to think she actually did because the understanding and resistance to adulthood depicted in the novel implies an unfamiliarity with the adult world. The story itself is escapist wishful thinking of a girl living autonomously among nature - childish, maybe, but escapism is hardly confined to actual children, so I don't know.

There are echoes of environmental longing that I found really fascinating for their time and perspective. "The House Without Windows" references Eepersip's habitation in the wilderness, and she finds herself to be both guardian and companion of creation: "It seemed to her that the sea was in her case, and that she, through foolish forgetfulness, had wandered off from it - wandered off from her guarding." She is disdainful of indoor homes, refusing to even enter them, and she essentially gives up her human selfhood after living among creation for so long: "'I am Eepersip Eigleen,' she answered. 'I mean,' she added doubtfully, 'I was."

Perhaps I patronize both 9 year olds and environmental ethics of the 1920s by being so impressed to find this sort of nuance in this book. But I am quite impressed by it. This is a small and simple book, a children's story in all senses, but perhaps more credit should be given to children's imagination and whimsy as well.
… (mais)
½
 
Assinalado
the_awesome_opossum | 2 outras críticas | May 10, 2011 |

Listas

Prémios

Estatísticas

Obras
8
Membros
126
Popularidade
#159,216
Avaliação
4.2
Críticas
3
ISBN
14
Línguas
3

Tabelas & Gráficos