Written w/ a laconic sweetness, it is nevertheless resonant w/ indications of trauma – loss, rejection, abjection.ĭolls can be quite serious. & Little Bear is a kind of wish fulfillment & also a plateau in which Edith’s sensitivities can be played out, in determining her emotional perimeters. I am struck by how Edith, the lonely doll of the title, encounters & addresses serious issues: isolation, separation, doubt. I’ve been rereading The Lonely Doll & other books by Dare Wright. & then subsequently others I knew mentioned this as well. was the first to mention The Lonely Doll to me, as it had been a beacon for her in her childhood. I was not aware of Dare Wright or her numerous children’s books, illustrated with her photographs until well into my adulthood.

I had had a copy which I had given away & it seemed fortuitous to pick up another copy, hardbound, to replace it. Marks Bookstore, I picked up a copy of Jean Nathan’s The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright, a biography of Dare Wright, the author of The Lonely Doll, a children’s book published originally in 1957 and currently in print. 'I think that the reason that the books worked so well for children is in a sense they were written by a person who was a child herself.Yesterday, browsing at the St. Wright, who died in 2001, 'was working out many of the things that troubled her through these stories,' Nathan says. that then came out in these children's books,' the biographer says. 'All of her stories turn on aspects of her own childhood, the fears of punishment and being abandoned. 'I think that was the central trauma of Dare's life, losing both her father and her brother as a young child, and was something that stayed with her throughout her life,' Nathan says. Her parents were divorced when Wright was three years old, resulting in her separation from her older brother. Wright's troubled childhood was reflected in the Lonely Doll books. Nathan discusses Dare's life with NPR's Steve Inskeep. Nathan has written The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll, a biography of the late author and photographer Dare Wright, who created a series of popular children's books that scores of girls grew up with from the 1950s to the 1980s.

The children's title featured photos of a doll named Edith and stuffed bears who looked so authentic that Nathan believed Edith was a real girl. When she was growing up, author Jean Nathan learned to read with a book called The Lonely Doll.

The Lonely Doll by Dare Wright