Gene Stratton-Porter

At 61 years old, Gene Stratton-Porter physical status not available right now. We will update Gene Stratton-Porter's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Gene Stratton-Porter (August 17, 1863 – December 6, 1924), born Geneva Grace Stratton, a Wabash County, Indiana, author, nature photographer, and naturalist.

In 1917, Stratton-Porter, a well-known author, pushed for legislation to protect Limberlost Swamp and other wetlands in Indiana's state.

Gene Stratton Porter Productions, a silent film-era producer, established her own production company in 1924. Stratton-Porter wrote several best-selling books in addition to columns for national newspapers, including McCall's and Good Housekeeping, among others.

Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages, including Braille, and at their high point in the 1910s, she has sold over 50 million readers.

Eight of her books, including A Girl of the Limberlost, were turned into touching pictures.

A Song of the Wilderness was also a one-woman play by Stratton-Porter.

Two of her former homes in Indiana are state historic sites, the Limberlost State Historical Site in Geneva and the Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site on Sylvan Lake, near Rome City, Indiana.

Early life and education

Grace Stratton, the twelfth and last child of Mary (Shallenberger) and Mark Stratton, was born at Hopewell Farm in Wabash County, Indiana, on August 17, 1863. Mark Stratton, a Methodist minister and farmer of English descent, and Mary Stratton, a homemaker of German-Swiss ancestry, were married in Ohio on December 24, 1835, and settled at Hopewell Farm in 1848. Catherine, Mary Ann, Anastasia, Florence, Ada, Jerome, Irvin, Leander, and Lemon were among the eleven siblings, in comparison to two sisters, Samira and Louisa Jane, who died at an early age. Mary Ann, Geneva's married sister, died in an accident in February 1872; her teen brother, Leander, who Geneva called Laddie, drowned in the Wabash River on July 6, 1872.

Geneva, Indiana, eighteen years old Geneva, married her parents and three unmarried siblings in 1874. They lived in the home of Anastasia and her husband, Alvah Taylor, a lawyer, in Geneva. On February 3, 1875, Geneva's mother died less than four months after the family's move to Wabash. Geneva boarded in Wabash with various relatives until she married Charles Porter in 1886. During her courtship with Porter, Geneva, who was also named Geneve during her youth, shortened her name to Geneve.

Gene did not complete formal education early in life, but she did have a keen fascination with animals, especially birds. Gene's father and her brother, Leander, taught her to love nature as she wandered around the family farm, discovering animals in their natural habitats and caring for various animals.

When her father shot a red-tailed hawk, she rescued it and nursed it back to health. Her family named her "Little Bird Woman" and her father gave her "the personal and indisputable ownership of each bird of every description that made its home on his property."

"British woman Sophie was born out of nowhere, always pointed out every natural beauty, and in some cases, to drive home a precept," the child [Stratton-Porter] lived outside the wild almost entirely." Gene began attending school on a regular basis and became a voracious reader as the family moved to Wabash in 1874. She began music lessons in banjo, violin, and piano from her sister, Florence, as well as private art lessons from a local instructor. Gene spent only the final term of her senior year at Wabash High School. Because she was failing her classes, she made the decision on her own to leave, later claiming that she had left school to care for Anastasia, who was terminally ill with cancer and receiving medical attention in Illinois.

Source

Job/Career

Gene sought more responsibilities beyond wife and mother as a result of her marriage to Charles Porter, who gave financial stability and personal freedom. In 1895, she began writing as a form of self-expression and as a way to earn her own money. Stratton-Porter believed that as long as her work did not interfere with her family's needs, she was free to pursue her own interests. She began her literary career by studying and writing about birdlife in the upper Wabash River valley and the natural world she encountered on her visits to the Limberlost Swamp, less than a mile from her house in Geneva, Indiana. The Limberlost Swamp at Geneva, 1913, and 1913, the Cabin at Wildflower Woods in northeastern Indiana became the laboratory for her nature studies and inspiration for her short stories, novels, essays, photography, and films.

Stratton-Porter published twenty-six books, including twelve novels, eight nature studies, two books of poetry, and two collections of stories and children's books. Five of the fifty-five books that have sold one million or more copies between 1895 and 1945, five of which were Stratton-Porter novels. Freckles (1904), A Girl of the Limberlost (1909), Laddie (1913), and Michael O'Halloran (1915) were among Stratton-Porter's best-selling books. Stratton-Porter turned everyday life and friends into her fiction. Many of her works explore difficult topics such as violence, prostitution, and abandonment. The anti-Asian sentiment she wrote reflected was widespread in the United States during this period, as demonstrated by Her Father's Daughter (1921). Her readers were also introduced to the notion of land and wildlife conservation by her other writings.

Although Stratton-Porter preferred to focus on nature books, her romantic books that earned her notoriety and fortune. Despite that she did not establish an irrefutable link between nature and romance in her plotlines, nature does provide a welcome reprieve for her characters as she felt it was for her as a child. These romantic novels provided her with the funds she needed to pursue her nature studies. Her books have been translated into twenty-three languages, as well as Braille. Her readership was estimated at 50 million in the early 1910s, with her literary books' earnings estimated at $2 million.

Stratton-Porter began her career in 1895, when she sent nature photos that she had made to Recreation magazine. "A New Experience in Millinery," the publication's first published article, was published in the magazine's February 1900 issue. The author wrote about her concerns about killing birds in order to use their feathers as hat trims. Stratton-Porter also wrote a photography column titled "Camera Notes" at the magazine's request. In July 1901, she moved to Outing, a natural history journal, doing similar duties. Stratton-Porter began contributing short stories and nature-related articles to journals on a regular basis, with increasing success. In September 1901, a first short story, "Laddie, the Princess and the Pie," was published in a Metropolitan magazine. Stratton Porter, an author who wanted to appeal to a wider audience, began writing novels with fictional elements. In addition to essays and editorials that were distributed in magazines with national circulation such as McCall's and Good Housekeeping, Stratton-Porter's writing also included poetry and children's tales.

Despite the fact that it was published anonymously in 1893, circumstantial evidence shows that Stratton-Porter's first book was The Strike at Shane's. Stratton-Porter, on the other hand, never revealed that she wrote it and that the author was never revealed.

The Song of the Cardinal (1903), Bobbs-Merrill's first, full-length attributed book, about a red bird living along the Wabash River. The book chronicled how birds lived in the wild as well as her photographs. Despite the fact that the book was a modest commercial success and was warmly welcomed by literary scholars, the Stratton-Porter's publisher was worried that nature stories would not be as popular as romance novels. Stratton-Porter's second book, Stratton-Porter, wanted to blend nature and romance. Freckles (1904), which was published by Doubleday, Page and Company, became a best-selling book. Despite poor critiques from critics, the book's success in readers aided her in beginning her career as a good novelist.

A Girl of the Limberlost (1909), a very popular and her best-known project, earned her worldwide fame. Elnora Comstock, a lonely, poverty-stricken girl who lived on a farm in Adams County, is a central character in the film and earns money to pay for her education by collecting and selling moth specimens. The main character's vivacious, individualistic personality is similar to Stratton-Porter's. The novel's literary commentators called it a "well written" and "wholesome tale." The initials of her third book, At the Foot of the Rainbow (1907), about two people who like fishing and trapping were "disappointing," but Stratton-Porter's next book, The Harvester (1911), about David Langston, who grows and sells medicinal herbs, as well as his love interest, Ruth Jameson, who embodies his ideal partner. In 1912, it debuted at number one on the best-seller list.

Freckles (1904), A Girl of the Limberlost (1909), and The Harvester (1911) are set in northeast Indiana's wooded wetlands and swamps. Stratton-Porter was a huge fan of the area and its wildlife and had written numerous reports about it. Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost, an inexpensive reprint, brought Stratton-Porter to the public's notice in the United States as well as abroad. Her book's translations into other languages also increased her international audience. In 1910, when Stratton-Porter signed a long-term deal with Doubleday, Page and Company to publish her books, she promised to produce one manuscript a year, alternated between novels and nonfiction nature books.

Laddie: A True Blue Story (1913), another of Stratton-Porter's best-selling books, included elements that resembled her early life. It was written when she oversaw the construction of her house in Noble County, Indiana, and she referred to it as her most autobiographical book. By the twelfth child of the "Stanton" family, the tale is told in the first person. The title character is based on Stratton-Porter's deceased older brother, Leander, whom Stratton-Porter referred to as Laddie. Laddie, as in the originals of Stratton-Porter's families, is intimately linked to the property and sympathizes with their father's occupation of farming.

When visiting her daughter, Jeannette, and her family, Michael O'Halloran (1915), her seventh book, was inspired by a newsboy she had encountered in Philadelphia. Daughter of the Land (1918), her new book, did not do as well as her earlier novels. Stratton-Porter's novels' sales gradually decreased, and by 1919, her name as a best-selling author began to fade. Undeterred, she continued to write until her death in 1924.

Her Father's Daughter (1921), one of Stratton-Porter's last books, was set in southern California, just south of Los Angeles, where she had lived around 1920. The book is particularly biased against immigrants of Asian descent. One of Stratton-Porter's biographers, Judith Reck Long, said that World War I-era racial mistrust and nationativism were widespread in the United States, and it was not unprecedented to be anti-Asian in southern California at the time. Barbara Olenyik Morrow, another of her biographers, argued that the book was deliberately playing to the book's ethnic prejudices of the time. The Literary Review, ignoring its anti-Asian content, praised its "wholesome charm" in its "wholesome charm."

The White Flag (1923), which was criticized as an old-fashioned melodrama, did not make the bestseller list, but Good Housekeeping magazine's serialization began in 1923, well before the book's publication. Stratton-Porter's filmmaking passions had shifted by the time of its appearance.

The Keeper of the Bees (1925) and The Magic Garden (1927) were the last of Stratton-Porter's books published before she died. Both of them were written at her Catalina Island home and released posthumously. The Keeper of the Bees is a tale about a World War I soldier who regains his heath by the revival of "power and beauty of nature." The tale appeared in McCall's magazine from February to September 1925 and was published in book form later this year. The Magic Garden, a book about a woman of divorced parents, was written for her two grandchildren, whose parents divorced when they were young. James Leo Meehan, both Stratton-Porter's business partner and son-in-law, wrote a screenplay of the novel shortly after Stratton-Porter had finished it.

Millions of copies of Stratton-Porter's books were sold and the majority of them became best sellers, but the literary establishment sluggish," "too virtuous," and "idealistic." Despite the skepticism, she was a favorite among readers of her books. "Time, the hearts of my readers, and the personals of my publisher will bring me my ultimate home," Stratton-Porter once said.

Stratton-Porter, a keen observer of nature, wrote eight nonfiction nature books that were moderately in demand relative to her novels. What I Do With Birds (1907) began as a six-month illustrated series for the Ladies' Home Journal from April to August 1906. The Bobbs-Merrill Company published the book in a print version that also includes Stratton-Porter's photographs. Birds of the Bible (1909), an illustrated reference book published by Jennings and Graham of Cincinnati, included eighty-one of Stratton-Porter's photographs. Both of these nature books were slow sellers. Music of the Wild (1910), as well published by Jennings and Graham, warned of the negative consequences of trees and swamps' deforestation on rainfall. Her warnings appeared nearly two decades before the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, as well as present-day environmental issues concerning climate change.

Moths of the Limberlost (1912), the nature book of which Stratton-Porter was "most proud," was dedicated to Neltje Blanchan, a fellow nature writer and the wife of her publisher Frank Nelson Doubleday. Stratton-Porter wrote the book Homing with the Birds (1919), prior to her relocation to California in 1919. It was praised for its content, but it was also described as having simple-to-understand words for the general population. Wings (1923) was published a year before her death; Tales You Won't Believe (1925) was published posthumously.

Although literary commentators referred to her books as overly sentimental, academics dismissed her nature writing because they felt that her study methods were unscientific. Stratton-Porter, a non-scientist, based her field study on wildlife's domestic behavior, including nest-building, diet, and social behavior. Her writing sought to describe nature in ways that her readers could comprehend and avoided scientific jargon, lengthy, dry statistics.

Stratton-Porter published articles and photographs in magazines including Metropolitan, Recreation, Outing, Country Life in America, and Ladies' Home Journal. Stratton-Porter wrote articles for the Izaak Walton League's publication Outdoor America and a thirteen-part series of nature articles for Good Housekeeping after transferring to California in 1919. In addition, she promised to write a series of editorials for McCall's magazine in a monthly column titled the "Gene Stratton-Porter's Page," which began in January 1922. Tales You Won't Believe (1925), a series of articles written by Stratton-Porter for Good Housekeeping and Let Us Highly Resolve (1927), a collection of essays that had appeared in McCall's magazine, was published after her death.

Jeannette Monroe, whom Stratton-Porter also identified as "Morning Face," was dedicated to Morning Face (1916), a collection of children's stories that also included her photographs. In January 1921, she first poem to appear in a national magazine, "Symbols." The Fire Bird (1922), a Native American tragedy, was the first of her long narrative poems to be published in book form. Its revenues were poor, and literary commentators were not keen to hear it. "Euphorbia," Stratton-Porter's poem "Euphorbia," was published in three installments and paid her $12,500, "the most she had ever received for her poetry." Tiberius Caesar's quest for information about Jesus' life and appearance (1923), another of her long narrative poems, includes Jesus of the Emerald (1923). In the book's afterword, Stratton-Porter outlines her religious convictions.

Stratton-Porter, a writer and photographer, was a prolific artist and wildlife photographer specializing in the birds and moths of the Limberlost Swamp, one of the few wetlands in the lower Great Lakes Basin's lower wetlands. As part of her fieldwork, she also made sketches of her findings. Stratton-Porter's close-up photos of wildlife in their natural habitat were particularly noteworthy. She chronicled the formation of a black vulture in a series of three months in one of her early photographic studies. Stratton-Porter wrote an article titled "I Have Done with Birds (1907) that the initiative "yielded the only complete series of Vulture research ever made."

Stratton-Porter began photographing birds in the Limberlost Swamp and along the Wabash River near her Geneva, Indiana, after her husband, Charles, and daughter, Jeannette, gave her a camera as a Christmas gift in 1895. She contributed some of her early photographs to Recreation magazine in the late 1890s and wrote a regular camera column for the magazine in 1901. In 1902, an outing magazine hired her to do similar duties. She began to submit her own photographs as examples for her papers after being unimpressed by photographs, which she suggested to accompany her writing. She also liked to illustrate her nature books by using her own photographs. In 1900, thirteen of her wildlife photographs were published in the American Annual of Photography, which also included her observations on her fieldwork. Many of the images in Music of the Wild (1910) were taken at her Sylvan Lake home in northeastern Indiana.

In their native habitat, Stratton-Porter loved photographing wildlife. Although she hired men to help carry her cumbersome camera gear into the field for photo shoots, she preferred to work alone. Her husband used to accompany her in the field on occasion. As Stratton-Porter gained more experience, she purchased more camera equipment, including a custom-made camera that used eight-by-ten-inch glass photographic plates. Stratton-Porter said that the larger plates provided her with more detailed photographs of her subjects. She also developed her photographic plates in a darkroom she created in the bathroom at Limberlost Cabin, Indiana, and later in her darkroom at the Cabin at Wildflower Woods along Sylvan Lake.

Stratton-Porter expressed "her strong desire to instill her love of nature in others in order to enhance their lives and protect the natural world." She has also opposed the depopulation of wetlands that had been planted for commercial use. The timber harvest in the Limberlost Swamp was destroyed, as well as its shrubs and vines, and the resulting commercial development, which included oil exploration, devastated the landscape. The swamp was drained into the Wabash River, according to the Wabash River.

When the Indiana General Assembly passed legislation in Noble and LaGrange Counties in 1917, Stratton-Porter became more involved in the conservation movement. She joined others in urging the state legislature to repeal the legislation that would result in the destruction of wetlands in northeastern Indiana. Despite the fact that the law was repealed in 1920, the area's swamps were eventually drained.

Stratton-Porter, a national conservation group, became a founding member of the Izaak Walton League in 1922, assisting the conservation group's efforts to save the wild elk at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, from destruction. Stratton-Porter ordered that readers of Outdoor America, the league's magazine, be encouraged to take prompt action. She was also a vocal advocate for land and wetland conservation. "If we do not want our land to dry up and blow away, we must cut at least part of our trees," she wrote in an article for Outdoor America in 1922.

Stratton-Porter, a "pioneer" in Hollywood film, was dissatisfied with the Hollywood film version of her books by movie studios. Stratton-Porter's expanded her company ventures to include her own production studio to make moving pictures based on her novels because she wanted more control over the production process. Eight of her books have been turned into films.

Freckles, the first film based on her novels published in 1917, was released by Paramount Pictures, but Stratton-Porter was dissatisfied with the film because it did not closely follow her novel and decided to make her own. Thomas H. Ince produced Michael O'Halloran (1923), making it Stratton-Porter's first filmmaking effort. Stratton-Porter supervised the filming and assisted the principal producer, James Leo Meehan. Jeannette, Jeannette's daughter, penned the screenplay.

Stratton-Porter, 1924, formed her own film studio and production firm. Gene Stratton-Porter Productions created touching photographs based on her novels. Stratton-Porter's film company had produced two films, Michael O'Halloran (1923) and A Girl of the Limberlost (1924), by which time, she had completed her book The Keeper of the Bees, which had been completed for a third film before her death in December 1924. The Harvester (1927) at her Wildflower Woods estate in northeastern Indiana was shot by Stratton-Porter's studio. The films directed by Stratton-Porter's studio were released by the Film Booking Offices of America. None of these FBO-released films have survived.

After her death, Stratton-Porter's stories remained popular among filmmakers. Freckles and Laddie were produced by RKO Pictures, a successor to Film Booking Offices, in 1935. A Girl of the Limberlost (1934), Keeper of the Bees (1935), and Romance of the Limberlost (1938). Monogram Pictures created A Girl of the Limberlost (1934). The Harvester (1936) and Michael O'Halloran (1937) were two of Republic Pictures. The original negatives and 35mm prints of these early films are unlikely to have survived; however, several 16mm films made for television have been purchased by private collectors.

Four times the Girl of the Limberlost was adapted for film. First, as a silent film made by Stratton-Porter's production company in 1924 with Gloria Grey in the title role. W. Christy Cabanne's 1934 film version starred Marian Marsh, Betty Blythe, and Louise Dresser, an Indiana immigrant. Ruth Nelson was included in the 1945 version. Joanna Cassidy was portrayed by Stratton-Porter in 1990, a made-for-television film. The Romance of the Limberlost (1938), directed by William Nigh, starred Indiana actress Marjorie Main in the role of the mean stepmother.

The Keeper of the Bees was made into a film four times. In 1925, a silent film starring Robert Frazer was released in 1935 as a Monogram film starring Neil Hamilton; in 1942 for Columbia Pictures; and in 1948, Keeper of the Bees, a 1947 adaptation loosely based on the original novel. Gene Stratton Monroe, Stratton-Porter's granddaughter, appeared in the role of Little Scout in 1925.

Source

Honors and awards

• The Adirondack Forest Preserve Service dedicated to Stratton-Porter a memorial grove of 10,000 white pine trees at Tongue Mountain on Lake George, New York, in 1924, shortly after her death.
• The American Reforestation Association organized memorial tree plantings after her death on the grounds of Los Angeles-area schools.
• The College Woman's Salon of Los Angeles established an annual poetry award in her honor.
• R. R. Rowley named a trilobite, Pillipsia Stratton-Porteri, in her honor.
• The Purdue University Calumet campus's Porter Hall, along with the former elementary school that opened on the site in 1949, was named in her honor.
• In 2009 Stratton-Porter's portrait was added to the Hoosier Heritage Portrait Collection at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis.
• In 2009 Stratton-Porter was inducted into the Indiana Natural Resources Foundation's Hall of Fame (inaugural class) as an early conservationist.
• In 2015 Stratton-Porter was inducted into Wabash High School's Hall of Distinction for her contributions to literature, ecology and photography.
• Stratton-Porter's two former residences in Indiana, the Limberlost Cabin in Geneva and the Cabin at Wildflower Woods near Rome City were designated state historic sites and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites operates the two properties as house museums.