Lorna Beers
Encyclopedia
Lorna Doone Beers was an American novelist, poet, memoirist, and author of children's books. The winner of an early Hopwood Award
for fiction, Ms. Beers was viewed by editors at E.P. Dutton in New York as a writer with the literary potential and the mastery of Midwestern themes and voices to become another Ole Rolvaag or even Sinclair Lewis
. Her novels are praised for their strong characterizations of modern women, their sensitivity to the forces active in a changing America, and their clear-eyed poet’s view of life in the northern prairies. Her three major novels were written in the ten year period between 1922 and 1932.
, in 1897 to John Beers and Sara James Beers, a farming couple in their forties who had moved into the village and opened a hardware store and lumber yard just three years before Lorna's birth. The youngest of five children (her siblings were Priscilla, Harry, Hilton, and Jessa), she grew up in a hardworking farming community which had been frontier only a few years earlier. Her mother Sara died when Lorna was 13. Beers described herself as going off to college (unusual for a young woman in Minnesota at the time) still wearing her waist-length blonde braids.
With her writing encouraged by her professors, she would graduate from the University of Minnesota and win a teaching assistantship in English there. She would study later at the University of Michigan and George Washington University. She marched for women’s suffrage, and in 1918, when she was 21, married a young businessman, Clyde Raymond (Ray) Chambers. Their son Richard was born in 1924.
wrote in The New Republic, “There is something Russian about this book, and there is also something very American about it.” Lovett praised “its truth to essential conditions.” In 1929 Beers published A Humble Lear, which an Ohio reviewer described “as an amazingly gripping novel of farm life,” and the New York Times Book Review characterized as “absorbing because it is real.”
Published in 1932 and the winner of a prestigious Avery Hopwood Award at the University of Michigan, The Mad Stone was enthusiastically promoted by Dutton as “an example of the pure American novel.” It was “a contribution to American literature,” the publisher said. Beers’ career as a serious novelist would last no longer, however, than this eventful ten year period between the early twenties and the appearance of The Mad Stone. Despite the early promise, she never published another novel. (The same period was similarly fruitful for another small town Minnesotan, Sinclair Lewis, who was developing some of the same themes in Mainstreet
, Babbitt
, and Elmer Gantry
before becoming the first American winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
.)
After 1932, and during the decade of the 1940s, Beers attempted no sustained writing efforts as ambitious as novels. Her time and energies were increasingly consumed, she would tell confidants years later, by caring for her husband, who was plagued by emotional problems, including crippling phobias. During this time the couple lived mostly in Summit, New Jersey, within commuting distance of Manhattan where Ray Chambers worked in the investment community. In the 1950s, Beers produced two perennially popular books for young readers that are still being read today, The Book of Hugh Flower (1952) and The Crystal Cornerstone (1955). In 1966, W.W.Norton published Wild Apples and North Wind, her lyrical and haunting memoir of living on a farm in Vermont. This book brought back some of the passion and intensity of her novels, but at a distant, bittersweet remove from the prairie narratives. Its acute, understated descriptions of the intersections between nature and people echo Robert Frost and anticipate Annie Dillard.
selected one of her poems for Fire and Sleet and Candlelight, an anthology devoted to works on fantasy and the macabre by living poets. By 1966, the couple moved to Staunton, Virginia
, in the Shenandoah Valley. Widowed in 1974, Beers lived quietly there with her widowed daughter-in-law, whom she adored, on a shady hill above a lovely women’s college campus. The walls of her old house were lined floor to ceiling with thousands of books. She died in 1989 at age 92. Among her papers was a completed first draft of another novel.
in literature. This important page in the American literary canon by a pioneering woman novelist is in danger of being lost, but perhaps digital books on demand or Project Gutenberg can help to restore it.
Hopwood Award
The Hopwood Awards are a major scholarship program at the University of Michigan, founded by Avery Hopwood.Under the terms of the will of Avery Hopwood, a prominent American dramatist and member of the Class of 1905 of The University of Michigan, one-fifth of Mr. Hopwood's estate was given to the...
for fiction, Ms. Beers was viewed by editors at E.P. Dutton in New York as a writer with the literary potential and the mastery of Midwestern themes and voices to become another Ole Rolvaag or even Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
. Her novels are praised for their strong characterizations of modern women, their sensitivity to the forces active in a changing America, and their clear-eyed poet’s view of life in the northern prairies. Her three major novels were written in the ten year period between 1922 and 1932.
Early life and education
She was born in Maple Plain, MinnesotaMaple Plain, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 2,088 people, 770 households, and 536 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,875.4 people per square mile . There were 786 housing units at an average density of 706.0 per square mile...
, in 1897 to John Beers and Sara James Beers, a farming couple in their forties who had moved into the village and opened a hardware store and lumber yard just three years before Lorna's birth. The youngest of five children (her siblings were Priscilla, Harry, Hilton, and Jessa), she grew up in a hardworking farming community which had been frontier only a few years earlier. Her mother Sara died when Lorna was 13. Beers described herself as going off to college (unusual for a young woman in Minnesota at the time) still wearing her waist-length blonde braids.
With her writing encouraged by her professors, she would graduate from the University of Minnesota and win a teaching assistantship in English there. She would study later at the University of Michigan and George Washington University. She marched for women’s suffrage, and in 1918, when she was 21, married a young businessman, Clyde Raymond (Ray) Chambers. Their son Richard was born in 1924.
Career as a Writer
Beers achieved considerable national acclaim for her novels, all of which were set in the northern plains. While still in her mid-twenties, she attracted the interest of major New York publisher E. P. Dutton, whose editors took pains to debut her as a “literary” writer (as opposed to a writer of romances). When Prairie Fires was published in 1925, eminent critic Robert Morss LovettRobert Morss Lovett
Robert Morss Lovett was an American academic, writer, editor, political activist, and government official....
wrote in The New Republic, “There is something Russian about this book, and there is also something very American about it.” Lovett praised “its truth to essential conditions.” In 1929 Beers published A Humble Lear, which an Ohio reviewer described “as an amazingly gripping novel of farm life,” and the New York Times Book Review characterized as “absorbing because it is real.”
Published in 1932 and the winner of a prestigious Avery Hopwood Award at the University of Michigan, The Mad Stone was enthusiastically promoted by Dutton as “an example of the pure American novel.” It was “a contribution to American literature,” the publisher said. Beers’ career as a serious novelist would last no longer, however, than this eventful ten year period between the early twenties and the appearance of The Mad Stone. Despite the early promise, she never published another novel. (The same period was similarly fruitful for another small town Minnesotan, Sinclair Lewis, who was developing some of the same themes in Mainstreet
MainStreet
MainStreet was a department store chain based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The chain was launched in November 1983 by Federated Department Stores . Throughout the 1980s, the chain expanded to twenty-nine stores in Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota...
, Babbitt
Babbitt
-Fiction:*Babbitt , a 1922 novel by Sinclair Lewis.**Babbitt , a 1924 film based on the novel**Babbitt , a 1934 film based on the novel...
, and Elmer Gantry
Elmer Gantry
Elmer Gantry is a satirical novel written by Sinclair Lewis in 1926 and published by Harcourt in March 1927.-Background:Lewis did research for the novel by observing the work of various preachers in Kansas City in his so-called "Sunday School" meetings on Wednesdays. He first worked with William L...
before becoming the first American winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
.)
After 1932, and during the decade of the 1940s, Beers attempted no sustained writing efforts as ambitious as novels. Her time and energies were increasingly consumed, she would tell confidants years later, by caring for her husband, who was plagued by emotional problems, including crippling phobias. During this time the couple lived mostly in Summit, New Jersey, within commuting distance of Manhattan where Ray Chambers worked in the investment community. In the 1950s, Beers produced two perennially popular books for young readers that are still being read today, The Book of Hugh Flower (1952) and The Crystal Cornerstone (1955). In 1966, W.W.Norton published Wild Apples and North Wind, her lyrical and haunting memoir of living on a farm in Vermont. This book brought back some of the passion and intensity of her novels, but at a distant, bittersweet remove from the prairie narratives. Its acute, understated descriptions of the intersections between nature and people echo Robert Frost and anticipate Annie Dillard.
Later years
The couple retired to a 150-year old farmhouse in rural Vermont in the late 1950s. Through the sixties and into the seventies Beers was a frequent contributor of poetry, stories, and short pieces to publications like Harper's, Yankee, The New England Galaxy, The Sign, and the Christian Science Monitor. August DerlethAugust Derleth
August William Derleth was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first publisher of the writings of H. P...
selected one of her poems for Fire and Sleet and Candlelight, an anthology devoted to works on fantasy and the macabre by living poets. By 1966, the couple moved to Staunton, Virginia
Staunton, Virginia
Staunton is an independent city within the confines of Augusta County in the commonwealth of Virginia. The population was 23,746 as of 2010. It is the county seat of Augusta County....
, in the Shenandoah Valley. Widowed in 1974, Beers lived quietly there with her widowed daughter-in-law, whom she adored, on a shady hill above a lovely women’s college campus. The walls of her old house were lined floor to ceiling with thousands of books. She died in 1989 at age 92. Among her papers was a completed first draft of another novel.
Literary Reputation
The readership of Lorna Beers can be said to be at a very low ebb today.(All three of her novels are not only out of print but actually qualify as rare books.) Even short biographical articles are difficult to find. Beers’ popular audience today is composed largely of teachers and parents or grandparents who were touched by her children’s books in the 1950s, or somehow came across Wild Apples and North Wind in the 1960s. (It is now long out of print as well). There is a continuing interest in her novels, however, by professors and graduate students in literature, and they have been a focus of doctoral dissertations on the literature of the plains states, or early twentieth century feminist authors, or regionalismRegionalism (literature)
In literature, regionalism or local color refers to fiction or poetry that focuses on specific features – including characters, dialects, customs, history, and topography – of a particular region...
in literature. This important page in the American literary canon by a pioneering woman novelist is in danger of being lost, but perhaps digital books on demand or Project Gutenberg can help to restore it.
Works
- Prairie Fires (1925)
- A Humble Lear (1929)
- The Mad Stone (1932)
- The Book of Hugh Flower (1952)
- The Crystal Cornerstone (1955)
- Wild Apples and North Wind (1966)