Barbara Newhall Follett

Barbara Newhall Follett (born March 4, 1914 in Hanover , New Hampshire ; missing since December 7, 1939 ) was an American child prodigy novelist. Her first novel, The House Without Windows , was published in January 1927 when she was only twelve years old. At fourteen, she published her next novel, The Voyage of the Norman D. , which received critical acclaim. After Follet reportedly became depressed as a result of married life, she left their home at the age of 25 in December 1939 and disappeared without a trace.

Life

Follett was born to literary critic and editor Wilson Follett and child writer Helen Thomas Follett. She had an older half-sister named Grace from her father's first marriage and a younger sister, Sabra Follett, later Sabra Follett Meservey, who was the first woman to be admitted to Princeton University as a doctoral student in 1961. Barbara was homeschooled by her mother and began writing her own poetry at the age of four. At the age of seven she had started to put her own imaginary world, Farksolia , on paper and to develop her own language, Farksoo , which was spoken there . The poems and stories often dealt with nature and wilderness.

In 1923, at the age of eight, she began writing on a small, portable typewriter, The Adventures of Eepersip , later renamed The House Without Windows, as a birthday present for her mother. The story was about a young girl named Eepersip who runs away from home and family to live happily in nature with animal friends. Although her manuscript was destroyed in a house fire later that year, Follett rewrote the entire story. Her father, a publisher of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. , submitted her story there for publication. With her father's support, The House Without Windows was eventually accepted and published by Knopf, and received critical acclaim from The New York Times , the Saturday Review, and HL Mencken . Because of this early success, Barbara was hailed by some as a child prodigy. Her opinion was sought from radio stations and asked to read and review other children's books, such as Now We Are Six by British author AA Milne .

Follett's next novel, The Voyage of the Norman D , was based on her experience with a coastal schooner in Nova Scotia . It was published in 1928 and, like the first publication, received great critical acclaim.

However, that same year, Follett's father left her mother for another woman. This was a devastating blow to Follett, who was deeply connected to her father. Although she was only 14 years old, she had already reached the high point of her life and career.

As a result, her family went through difficult times. At the age of 16, as the Great Depression deepened, Follett was working as a secretary in New York City. She wrote several other manuscripts, including the novel Lost Island and the travelogue Travels Without a Donkey , the title of which is a reference to Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey .

In the summer of 1931, Follett met Nickerson Rogers. The couple spent the summer of 1932 on the Appalachian Trail from Mount Katahdin to the Massachusetts border and then sailed to Spain, where they continued their hiking excursions in Mallorca and through the Swiss Alps . After settling in Brookline, Massachusetts , the couple married in July 1934. At the time, Barbara was still writing, but her work was no longer well received by publishers. Although Barbara was initially happy in her marriage, from 1937 she began to express dissatisfaction about married life in letters to close friends. Follett soon believed that Rogers was being unfaithful to her and became depressed.

According to her husband, Follett left her apartment on December 7, 1939 after an argument with $ 30 in his pocket and disappeared without a trace. Rogers did not report Follett's disappearance to the police for two weeks, claiming he was awaiting her return. Four months after notifying the police, he applied for a missing person bulletin to be issued . Since the bulletin was published under Follett's married name "Rogers", it went unnoticed by the media, which only learned of her disappearance in 1966.

In 1952, thirteen years after Follett's disappearance, her mother Helen insisted that the Brookline Police investigate the matter further. Helen had become suspicious of Rogers after she found out he had made little effort to find his wife. In a letter to Rogers, she wrote that his calm looked like he had something to hide in relation to Barbara's disappearance and that she would not remain inactive for the last few years of her life, but would find out what happened, whether she was due to amnesia or one Mental breakdown in a facility.

Follett's body was never found, and no evidence was ever presented to suggest that a crime had occurred or was ruled out. The date and circumstances of her death were never set.

In 2020 her nephew Stefan Cooke published her novel Lost Island and three other stories posthumously in the Farksolia publishing house he founded .

Publications

• Barbara Newhall Follet: The House Without Windows & Eepersip's Life There . Knopf, New York, London 1927.
• Barbara Newhall Follet: The Voyage of the Norman D. Knopf, New York, London 1928.
• Barbara Newhall Follet: Lost Island (plus three stories and an afterword) . Farksolia, 2020, ISBN 978-0-9962431-4-8 .

See also

• Image in sister project

Web links

• Memorial website of her nephew Stefan Cooke with the publication of Follet's texts
• Astral Aviary
• Barbara Newhall Follett's
• The line up

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Paul Collins: Vanishing Act. In: Lapham's Quarterly. December 2010, accessed August 30, 2020 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Books: Tragedy in a Hothouse ( Memento from August 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Time Magazine . 3rd June 1966.
3. ↑ Photos of Barbara's family. In: Farksolia. Accessed August 30, 2020 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Biography. In: Farksolia. February 15, 2012, accessed August 30, 2020 . 
5. ↑ Jackie Morris: First novel at 12, gone at 25: the mystery of Barbara Newhall Follett. In: The Guardian. September 14, 2019, accessed August 30, 2020 .