Women’s History Month
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
~Jack London
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953) was born in Washington, DC, to Arthur Frank Kinnan, an attorney for the US Patent Office, and his wife, Ida. 
She grew up in Brookland, “Little Rome,” in the Northeast DC quadrant between South Dakota and Rhode Island Avenues, not far from the Catholic University of America and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. She attended the University of Wisconsin, majored in English, worked for the school’s literary magazine, and married (1919) a fellow student, Charles Rawlings. Together they moved to Louisville, Kentucky, then Rochester, New York, working for the local newspapers, and finally to Cross Creek, Florida, where they purchased (1928) a small orange grove. 
Earlier Marjorie had been trying her hand at Gothic romances, which her editor, Max Perkins of Scribners, discouraged; but when she tapped into local folklore and rural life in backwoods Florida, he was pleased. Now her career was getting somewhere. Her first novel, South Moon Under (1933), became a Book of the Month Club feature and was a finalist for a Pulitzer. However, her husband did not like Florida. Or maybe he envied her success. He left.
Maxwell Perkins had a bevy of writers up and down the East Coast. It was not unusual for him to visit Ernest Hemingway in Key West, 
come see Marjorie at Cross Creek, then go visit Thomas Wolfe in Asheville, North Carolina, and F Scott Fitzgerald wherever he could find him. Marjorie and Max’s other writers knew one another during the days of the 1930s Great Depression. Marjorie also knew personally the New England poet Robert Frost, the Atlanta novelist Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind), the Florida educator Mary McLeod Bethune, and the novelist Zora Neale Hurston.
Marjorie liked to entertain. Her little post-and-beam Florida Cracker house wasn’t much, but it was comfortable enough in summer. Because of the threat of fire, and the heat from cooking, her kitchen was not attached to the house. 
It was a separate building in the back yard. There she cooked her own caught fish, which she would serve in the screened-in back porch or formal dining room. She would be quick to tell you, “I get as much satisfaction from preparing a perfect dinner for a few good friends as from turning out a perfect paragraph in my writing.” In the winter the uninsulated house had no heat. So, on cold days she would stay in bed in the back room and type wearing gloves.
Her third book, The Yearling (1939), became another Book of the Month Club feature and won a Pulitzer. MGM turned it into a film (1946). With money she made from The Yearling, Rawlings bought a beach cottage near St Augustine. She remarried (1941), this time to an Ocala, Florida, businessman, Norton Baskin, who turned an old mansion in St Augustine into a beach hotel, where he and she stayed about half the year.
Marjorie’s next book, Cross Creek (1942), an autobiography, again became a Book of the Month Club feature and was sent to servicemen overseas during World War II. 
She followed up with Cross Creek Cookery (1942), a compilation of her own recipes. For her last book, The Sojourner (1953), set up North, she purchased an old farmhouse in Van Hornesville, New York (1947), and spent part of each year there until her death. In addition to her popular books, she published over thirty short stories, mostly about Cross Creek and the Florida Crackers, one of the most well-known being “Gal Young ‘Un.”
Marjorie died in St Augustine of a cerebral hemorrhage and was buried at Antioch Cemetery, near Island Grove. A posthumously-published book, The Secret River (1955), won the Newbery Medal (1956). The benefactor of her estate was the University of Florida at Gainesville, not far from Ocala. Her house at Cross Creek is now the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park and a National Historic Landmark; she is featured on a US commemorative stamp (2008).
Copyright © 2012 Alexandra Lee
Aesthetics 