Helen Dore Boylston

Helen Dore Boylston (born April 4, 1895 in Portsmouth , New Hampshire , † September 30, 1984 in Trumbull , Connecticut ) was the American author of two popular youth book series about the nurse Sue Barton (in the German version as Susanne Barden ) and the actress Carol Page.

Live and act

Massachusetts General Hospital

Helen Boylston grew up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and then attended Simmons College in Boston for a year. At first she wanted to study medicine like her father, but then decided to become a nurse because of the shorter training period. In 1915, she graduated from Massachusetts General Hospital and, before the United States entered the war, traveled to France with a group of doctors and nurses from Harvard University, where they were integrated into the British Expeditionary Forces .

During World War I , Boylston cared for the wounded, specializing in anesthesia and attaining the rank of captain. About her experiences in the war she published the book "Sister" in 1927 : Diary of a War Nurse ( " Sister": Diary of a war nurse ).

After the 1918 armistice, Boylston stayed in Europe and worked for the Red Cross for two years, caring for civilians in Albania, Poland, Russia, Italy and Germany. During various stays in the United States, she ran an outpatient department and taught anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital, worked as a psychiatric nurse in New York, and as head nurse at a Connecticut hospital. She later used the wealth of experience she gained there for her books. Between 1921 and 1924 she worked again for the Red Cross.

Ford Model T from 1926

On a train between Paris and Warsaw, Boylston met the journalist Rose Wilder Lane , the daughter of the then unknown Laura Ingalls Wilder , the author of the book series Little House on the Prairie . Still eager for adventure, Boylston wrote to a friend: Dad wants me to settle down, but I'm young! I am young Why shouldn't I live? What is old age worth when all you can remember is forty years of empty days? In 1926 Lane, Boylston and their French servants traveled from Paris to Albania in a car called "Zenobia". You intended to make a living from writing in Albania. A travelogue titled Travels with Zenobia: Paris to Albania by Model T Ford ( to ride Zenobia: From Paris to Albania with a Ford Model T ) was published 1983rd

Boylston lived in Tirana for two years . Her publisher relates that she "once got the Albanian Prime Minister to carry her suitcase from the boat and tried to tip him because she did not know who he was." On another occasion she became in one for two hours Trench in southern Albania shot because someone mistook them. In Albania she was helping in a nursing school run by a former fellow student from Massachusetts. After two years she saw a picture of a baked potato in a magazine, got homesick and returned to the USA, where she first lived in a tent on the Wilders' property in Rocky Ridge, Missouri and, encouraged by the success of her war diary, in the In the summer of 1928 he turned entirely to writing. She has published articles and short stories in The Atlantic Monthly , Harper's, and Argosy , wrote a manuscript for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and recalls her time as a student nurse in the American Journal of Nursing . She lost substantial funds in the Depression and began working as a nurse again in the early 1930s.

In 1936 Boylston published the first of her seven Sue Barton books: Sue Barton: Student Nurse (German: Susanne Barden, out into life ). The books followed the life path of a red-haired nurse in her education, employment, marriage, motherhood, while at the same time she tried to maintain her independence. The books were extremely successful and had a great influence on the understanding of the roles young girls who wanted to take up a career between the 1930s and 1950s. They were praised for their lifelike and unsentimental portrayal of the nursing profession. According to Boylston, some of the characters, their names and places have autobiographical traits, the main character Sue Barton, on the other hand, is fictitious and corresponds to her ideal of a nurse.

When the character Sue Barton in Sue Barton: Superintendent Nurse (German: Susanne Barden, Wide Paths ) was married to Bill Barry and was expecting their first child, Boylston created a new book series about a new working young woman, the actress Carol Page. She later returned to Sue Barton and published the last two volumes in 1949 and 1952, Sue Barton: Neighborhood Nurse and Sue Barton: Staff Nurse (German: Susanne Barden, Reifen und Wirken ). In 1955, Boylston wrote the youth book Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross about the American Civil War nurse Clara Barton .

Boylston never married. She suffered from dementia for the last few years and died at the age of 89 in Trumbull, Connecticut, without leaving any descendants.

Works

• Literature by and about Helen Dore Boylston in the catalog of the German National Library
• Sister: Diary of a War Nurse (1927)
• Sue Barton, Student Nurse (1936)
• Sue Barton, Senior Nurse (1937)
• Sue Barton, Visiting Nurse (1938)
• Sue Barton, Rural Nurse (1939)
• Sue Barton, Superintendent of Nurses (1940)
• Carol Goes Backstage (1941)
• Carol Plays Summer Stock (1942)
• Carol on Broadway (1944)
• Carol on Tour (1946)
• Sue Barton, Neighborhood Nurse (1949)
• Sue Barton, Staff Nurse (1952)
• Clara Barton: Founder of American Red Cross (1955 and 1963)
• Travels With Zenobia: Paris to Albania by Model T Ford (with Rose Wilder Lane ) (1983)

Web links

• Literature by and about Helen Dore Boylston in the catalog of the German National Library