Journalist, short story writer, and novelist...
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was born on August 8, 1896, in Washington, D.C. Rawlings is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Yearling (1939), the story of young Jody Baxter's coming of age in the big scrub country which is now the Ocala National Forest in Florida. Rawlings began her career as a journalist, working for the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Rochester Journal, and the United Feature Syndicate. As a woman working as a journalist in the 1920s, Rawlings was something of a trailblazer.
Rawlings settled at Cross Creek, near Gainesville, Florida, in 1928, in order to write fiction. Cross Creek, published in 1942, tells of her enchantment with this part of rural Florida. Her association with Cross Creek continued until her death in 1953 at the age of 57.
- Search on the term writer in the Today in History Archive to read more about the lives of American writers such as Sherwood Anderson, William Faulkner, Thornton Wilder, and Langston Hughes. Search on Florida to read about topics such as colonial Florida and Florida's secession.
- Search on Florida in American Life Histories, 1936-1940 to find more recollections of Florida during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Read, for example, the narrative of Julien Philip Benjamin who was born in Ocala, Florida.
- Florida Folklife: from the WPA Collections 1937-1942 documents a wide variety of folkcultures throughout the state. Browse the Audio Title Index to find such titles as Collier in the Scrub, El caballo de palo, and Give Me a Ranch Down in Florida.
- Learn more about Florida. See the Pathfinder Search Guide for Florida prepared by the Learning Page, or search the American Memory collections on the keyword Florida.
- The collection Florida Folklife, 1937-1942 is a multiformat ethnographic field collection documenting cultures throughout Florida. It includes children's songs, blues, and a wide variety of other materials gathered by Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers. Browse the collection by Geographic Location to find material from a number of locations throughout the state.
- See the Library of Congress exhibition Women Come to the Front: Journalists, Photographers, and Broadcasters During WWII to learn about the emergence of women journalists in American society.
