Bess Streeter Aldrich

Bess Streeter Aldrich (February 17, 1881 – August 3, 1954) was an American author.

Bess Streeter Aldrich
BornBess Genevra Streeter
(1881-02-17)February 17, 1881
Cedar Falls, Iowa
DiedAugust 3, 1954(1954-08-03) (aged 73)
Lincoln, Nebraska
OccupationWriter (novelist)
NationalityAmerican
Period20th century
GenreFiction
SpouseCharles Aldrich

Life and career

Bess Genevra Streeter was an American fiction writer born in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Attending high-school in the town of her birth, she was the winner of two magazine fiction writing contests prior to graduating at the age of seventeen[1]. She was the last of the eight children of James Wareham and Mary Wilson Anderson Streeter.[2] After graduating from Iowa State Normal School with a teaching certificate, she taught school at several locations in Utah, later returning to Cedar Falls to earn an advanced degree in education[1].

In 1907, she married Charles Sweetzer Aldrich, who had graduated with a law degree from Iowa State University and had been one of the youngest captains in the Spanish–American War. Following the war, he served for years as a U.S. Commissioner in Alaska. They had four children—Mary, Robert, Charles and James. In 1909, they moved with their children and Bess's widowed mother to Elmwood, Nebraska, where Charles, Bess, and Bess's sister and brother-in-law Clara and John Cobb purchased the American Exchange Bank. Elmwood became the location for many of her stories, albeit called by different names.[3]

Aldrich began writing more regularly in 1911 when the Ladies' Home Journal advertised a fiction contest, which she entered and won $175 for her story entitled "The Little House Next Door". After this success she continued to write and submit work to publications such as McCall's, Harper's Weekly, and The American Magazine where she was generally paid between one and one-hundred dollars for her work[1]. Prior to 1918 she wrote under her pen name, Margaret Dean Stephens.[4] She went on to become one of the highest-paid women writers of the period. Her stories often concerned the Heartland/Plains pioneer history and were very popular with teenage girls and young women.

Aldrich's first novel, Mother Mason, was published in 1924. When Charles died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1925 at the age of 52 [1] Aldrich took up writing as a means of supporting her family. She was the author of about 200 short stories, including "The Woman Who Was Forgotten", and thirteen novels, including Miss Bishop. The latter novel was made into a movie Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941), which starred Martha Scott and Edmund Gwenn and premiered in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Aldrich received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in literature from the University of Nebraska in 1934 and was named into the Nebraska Hall of Fame in 1973. In 1946 Aldrich moved to Lincoln, Nebraska to be closer to her daughter and her writing slowed to just one story per year as age began to take its toll[1]. She died of cancer on August 3, 1954 and was buried next to her husband in Elmwood, Nebraska[1].

Aldrich's papers are held at the Nebraska State Historical Society in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Works
The Elms, Aldrich's home in Elmwood, Nebraska, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.[5]

Novels
  • Mother Mason (1924)
  • The Rim of the Prairie (1925)
  • The Cutters (1926)
  • A Lantern in Her Hand (1928)
  • A White Bird Flying (1931)
  • Miss Bishop (1933)
  • Spring Came On Forever (1935)
  • The Man Who Caught the Weather (1936)
  • Song of Years (1939)
  • The Drum Goes Dead (1941)
  • The Lieutenant's Lady (1942)
  • Journey into Christmas (1949)
  • The Bess Streeter Aldrich Reader (1950)
  • A Bess Streeter Aldrich Treasury (1959) (posthumous)

Other books
  • The Collected Short Works, 1907–1919
  • The Collected Short Works, 1920–1954

Magazine and newspaper articles
  • A Late Love, Baltimore News, (1898)
  • The Outsider, Christian Herald (1945)
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References
  1. Champion, Laurie (2000). American Women Writers. Greenwood. pp. 1-11. ISBN 0313309434.
  2. Milford B. Streeter, A Genealogical History of the Descendants of Stephen and Ursula Streeter, of Gloucester, Mass., 1642, 1896 p. 196.
  3. "Biography". Bess Streeter Aldrich Foundation. Retrieved 2016-08-28.
  4. "Bess Streeter Aldrich, 1881-1954". Nebraska State Historical Society. March 19, 2010.
  5. Jeffries, Janet. "National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form: 'The Elms'".
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