Texas Woman of Letters, Karle Wilson Baker.Texas Woman of Letters woman of letters n. pl. women of letters A woman who is devoted to literary or scholarly pursuits: "[Eva Le Gallienne] was ... , Karle Wilson Baker (Mrs.) Karle Wilson Baker (1878-1960) was an American poet and author, born at Little Rock, Ark., and educated at the University of Chicago. In spite of the frequent mordant bits, her poems have visions of real beauty. . By Sarah Ragland Jackson. Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. Pp. xvi, 236. $34.95, ISBN ISBN abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m 1-58544-456-1.) Karle Wilson Baker was one of the most celebrated Texas poets of the twentieth century, although she is now largely forgotten. In this carefully researched and absorbing biography, Sarah Ragland Jackson restores Baker to her rightful place of importance in Texas literary history. Born in 1878 in Little Rock, Arkansas Little Rock, Arkansas required military intervention to desegregate schools (1957–1958). [Am. Hist.: Van Doren, 556–557] See : Bigotry , Baker recalled being driven by a yearning to write from her earliest childhood and repeatedly expressed that it was through artistic creation that life became "worthwhile" for her (p. 47). After attending the University of Chicago, where she studied with William Vaughn Moody William Vaughn Moody (July 8, 1869 – October 17, 1910) was a U.S. dramatist and poet. Author of The Great Divide, first presented under the title of The Sabine Woman at the Garrick theatre in Chicago on April 12, 1906. , she moved with her family to Nacogdoches, Texas, in 1901. The East Texas town immediately captured her heart and mind, and its nature, people, and history served as her main wellspring well·spring n. 1. The source of a stream or spring. 2. A source: a wellspring of ideas. wellspring Noun of inspiration over the almost five decades of her writing career. Baker was a prolific writer of the lyric poetry for which in her lifetime she was the most recognized, of essays, novels, and works of fiction and nonfiction for children, and of copious letters, diaries, and journals. Drawing on all of this material, as well as sources from the many institutions and organizations with which Baker was associated and interviews with those who knew her, Jackson convincingly documents Baker's notable contributions to Texas letters. Jackson deftly interweaves Baker's public and private voices to recount the struggles and satisfactions of this particular woman's writing life. Baker's remarkable literary productivity was largely the result of her own talent, diligence, and determination. The combination conspired to earn her numerous significant accolades over the course of her career. Nonetheless, she also met with her fair share of rejection. In ruminations on her successes and failures and on the motivation and effort behind all the work that she did, Baker offered compelling insights into the creative process. She was quite reflective, too, about the challenges of balancing artistic work and family responsibilities. Baker evocatively described her "ideal" of a life oriented toward these dual forces as "domesticity with wings" (p. 75). In both her articulation of this vision and her attempts to manifest it in her own life, Baker played an important role in forging a path for modern womanhood. Her greatest contributions, though, were in her capacity as a regional writer. In treating this theme, Jackson might have provided a more critical interrogation interrogation In criminal law, process of formally and systematically questioning a suspect in order to elicit incriminating responses. The process is largely outside the governance of law, though in the U.S. of the particular ways in which Baker imagined Texas and the Southwest and considered how such representations related to larger trends in the cultural history of the period. While left wondering about this, readers are introduced to a writer whose contemplative spirit, reverence for nature, and fascination with Texas society and history amalgamated a·mal·ga·mate v. a·mal·ga·mat·ed, a·mal·ga·mat·ing, a·mal·ga·mates v.tr. 1. To combine into a unified or integrated whole; unite. See Synonyms at mix. 2. in a life and body of work that are surely worth knowing about today. CRISTA DELUZIO Southern Methodist University Southern Methodist University, at Dallas, Tex.; United Methodist; coeducational; chartered 1911. The school's facilities include laboratories for electron microscopy and stable isotopes, a museum of paleontology, and a graduate research center. |
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