35 Facts About Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an American writer who lived in rural Florida and wrote novels with rural themes and settings.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings grew up in the Brookland neighborhood and was interested in writing as early as age six; she submitted stories to the children's sections of newspapers until she was 16.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was selected as a member of the local senior women's honor society on campus, which in 1920 became a chapter of the national senior women's society, Mortar Board.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings met Charles Rawlings while working for the school literary magazine, and married him in 1919.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings briefly worked for the YWCA editorial board in New York City.

The couple moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where they both wrote for the Courier Journal, and then to Rochester, New York, where they wrote for the Rochester Journal-American and where Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote a syndicated column called "Songs of the Housewife".

In 1928, with a small inheritance from her mother, the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings purchased a 72-acre orange grove near Hawthorne, Florida, in a settlement named Cross Creek for its location between Orange Lake and Lochloosa Lake.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings brought the area to international fame through her writing.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was fascinated with the remote wilderness and the lives of Cross Creek residents, her Florida cracker neighbors, and felt a profound and transforming connection to the region and the land.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings actually made many visits to meet with Calvin and Mary Long to observe their family relationships.

Moonshiners are the subject of several of her stories, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings lived with a moonshiner for several weeks near Ocala, Florida, to prepare for writing the book.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings found immense success in 1938 with The Yearling, a story about a Florida boy and his pet deer and his relationship with his father, which she originally intended as a story for young readers.

In 1942, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings published Cross Creek, an autobiographical account of her relationships with her neighbors and her beloved Florida hammocks.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings published 33 short stories from 1912 to 1949.

In 1943, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings faced a libel suit for Cross Creek, filed by her neighbor Zelma Cason, whom Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had met the first day she moved to Florida.

Cason claimed Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings made her out to be a "hussy".

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had assumed their friendship was intact and spoke with her immediately.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings used Cason's forename in the book but described her in this passage:.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings manages her orange grove and as much of the village and county as needs management or will submit to it.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings combines the more violent characteristics of both and those who ask for or accept her ministrations think nothing at being cursed loudly at the very instant of being tenderly fed, clothed, nursed, or guided through their troubles.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings won the case and enjoyed a brief vindication, but the verdict was overturned in appellate court, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was ordered to pay damages in the amount of one dollar.

The toll the case took on Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was great, in both time and emotion.

Reportedly, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had been shocked to learn of Cason's reaction to the book and felt betrayed.

In Cross Creek, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings describes how she owns 72 acres of land and hires several people over the years to help her with day-to-day chores and activities.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings arranges for Leroy to be paroled to her and come work for her farm, and she has a wedding on the grounds for Beatrice and Leroy.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings decides he must leave, which causes her distress because she does not want GeeChee to go with him.

GeeChee is unable to stop herself from drinking, which leads a heartbroken Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings to dismiss her.

In 1941, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings married Ocala hotelier Norton Baskin, and he remodeled an old mansion into the Castle Warden Hotel in St Augustine, which currently houses the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings described her African-American employee Idella as "the perfect maid".

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was criticized throughout her career for being uneven with her talent in writing, something she recognized in herself, and that reflected periods of depression and heavy drinking, leading to and exacerbating her artistic frustration.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings has been described as having unique sensibilities; she wrote of feeling "vibrations" from the land and often preferred long periods of solitude at Cross Creek.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings died on December 14,1953, in St Augustine of a cerebral hemorrhage most likely brought on by her untreated alcoholism and chain smoking.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings bequeathed most of her property to the University of Florida in Gainesville, where she taught creative writing in Anderson Hall.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' reputation has managed to outlive those of many of her contemporaries.

In 1986, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was inducted into the Florida Women's Hall of Fame.