Gene Stratton-Porter

Never heard of Gene Stratton-Porter? How good a writer was this woman born in the later eighteen hundreds?

“As famous in the early 1900s as J.K. Rowling is now, Stratton-Porter
published 26 books: novels, nature studies, poetry collections and children’s
books. Only 55 books published between 1895 and 1945 sold upwards
of one million copies. Gene Stratton-Porter wrote five of those books—
far more than any other author of her time. Nine of her novels were made
into films, five by Gene Stratton-Porter Productions, one of the first movie
and production companies owned by a woman. “She did things wives of
wealthy bankers just did not do,” says Katherine Gould, curator of cultural
history at the Indiana State Museum.”

Geneva Grace Stratton, who was born on Hopewell Farm in Wabash County, Indiana, in 1863, the youngest of 12 children, described her childhood as one “lived out-of-doors with the wild almost entirely.” In her 1919 book Homing With the Birds she recalled a dramatic childhood encounter. She was climbing a catalpa tree in search of robins’ nests when she heard a blast from her father’s rifle. She watched a red-tailed hawk tumble from the sky. Before he could lift his weapon again, young Geneva bolted along a path and flew between bird and gun. Horrified that he could have shot his daughter, Mark Stratton pulled up the weapon.

Bleeding and broken, the hawk, she recalled, looked up at her “in commingled pain, fear, and regal defiance that drove me out of my senses.” They transported it to a barn where Geneva cleaned its wounds and nursed it back to health. It never flew again, but it followed her around the farm like a dog, plaintively calling to other hawks overhead.

Her family gave her the name “Little Bird Woman.”

Below are a few quotes from the author:

“I know men and women. An honourable man is an
honourable man, and a liar is a liar; both are born and
not made. One cannot change to the other any more
than that same old leopard can change its spots. After
a man tells a woman the first untruth of that sort, the
others come piling thick, fast, and mountain high.”

“I write as the birds sing, because I must, and usually
from the same source of inspiration.”

“Nature can be trusted to work her own miracle in the
heart of any man whose daily task keeps him alone
among her sights, sounds and silences.”

“To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service
a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him
with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began.
If in one small degree it shows him where he can be...
gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier...it is a wonder-working
book. If it opens his eyes to one beauty in nature he
never saw for himself and leads him one step toward
the God of the Universe, it is a beneficial book.”

“Sometimes it seems to me that the more we get hurt
in this world the decenter it makes us.”

“How a big majority of book critics and authors have
come to believe and to teach that no book is true to
life unless it is true to the worst in life, God knows.”

“In the economy of nature nothing is ever lost. I
cannot believe that the soul of man shall prove
the one exception.”

“We never know the timber of a man's soul until
something cuts into him deeply and brings the grain
out strong. You've the making of a mighty fine piece
of furniture.”


Her natural settings, wholesome themes and strong lead characters fulfilled the public’s desires to connect with nature and give children positive role models. She wrote at a pivotal point in American history. The Indiana frontier was fading. Small agrarian communities were turning into industrial centers connected by railroads. By the time she moved to the area, in 1888, this unique watery wilderness was disappearing because of the Swamp Act of 1850, which had granted “worthless” government-owned wetlands to those who drained them. Settlers took the land for timber, farming and the rich deposits of oil and natural gas. Stratton-Porter spent her life capturing the landscape before, in her words, it was “shorn, branded and tamed.” Her impact on conservation was later compared to President Theodore Roosevelt’s.

In 1996, conservation groups, including the Limberlost Swamp Remembered Project and Friends of the Limberlost, began buying land in the area from farmers to restore the wetlands. Drainage tiles were removed. Water returned. And with the water came the plants and bird life Stratton-Porter had described.

One of the movement’s leaders, Ken Brunswick, remembered reading Stratton-Porter’s What I Have Done With Birds when he was young—a vibrant 1907 nature study that reads like an adventure novel. At a time when most bird studies and illustrations were based on dead, stuffed specimens, Stratton-Porter mucked through the Limberlost in her swamp outfit in search of birds and nests to photograph:

“A picture of a Dove that does not make that bird
appear tender and loving, is a false reproduction.
If a study of a Jay does not prove the fact that it is
quarrelsome and obtrusive it is useless, no matter
how fine the pose or portrayal of markings....
A Dusky Falcon is beautiful and most intelligent,
but who is going to believe it if you illustrate the
statement with a sullen, sleepy bird?”

Now, birds once again chorus at the Loblolly Marsh Nature Preserve, which is owned by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Curt Burnette, a naturalist with the site, calls out, “Sedges have edges, rushes are round, and grasses are hollow from top to the ground!” A dozen of us follow him along paths through the prairie grass. He stops to identify wildflowers. Here’s beggar’s-ticks. Taste the mountain mint. Growing at your feet is partridge-pea. Pokeweed, bottle gentian, white false indigo. That mauve flower? Bull thistle.

Curt Burnette is describing Gene Stratton-Perry’s belated legacy. Want to learn more and get personally acquainted with this unique individual? Many of Stratton-Perry’s best books are available as free downloads on Guttenberg.com.


Post Script:
While I have read a considerable amount
of Gene Stratton-Perry’s writing, the vast for
This essay was garnered from various websites.
Much of the subject matter was originally
so well written that I chose not to rework/edit
the original content, and in that regard,
I neither deserve nor claim personal credit.
Barry Rachin