Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: New Year 2019

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: New Year 2019: Happy New Year to all!  May your doll dreams come true, and may we all have peace in 2019.  Publish PostOut of the dark winter night, a light will shine...

A Woman Writes a Thriller and a Male Attorney Collects Toys

I recently picked up another Tami Hoag thriller; love her books when I want to immerse myself in escapist horror and mystery!  She is a friend of my friend, Kim Ostrum Bush, also a romance writer.  Kim was my mom’s student, and a doll collector.  I ran into her one time at the old Masonic Temple Women’s Club Antique Show where Ralph’s Antique Dolls used to set up.  Now, the MT is Terror at Skellington Manor, my favorite haunt, with great animatronics and an extensive doll collection.

 

The novel I’m reading is Dark Paradise, and it takes place in New Eden, Montana.  There is an attorney who is also a collector of many things, including toys.  His name is Miller Daggrepont.  Here are his thoughts on collecting:

 

This is where I keep my collections . .. I collect everything  Signs, toys, farm equipment you name it.  Never know when the next big rage will hit.  I made a killing on Indian artifacts when all the Hollywood types started moving in.  They think they’re going native when they hang an old horse blanket on the wall.  Damned fools, I say—not because of the collecting.  Nothing wrong with collecting.  They’re just damned fools in general!(95)

 

 

Here are some more links if you enjoy large toy collections.  Don’t forget the Strong National Museum of Play. http://www.museumofplay.org/

 

Jerry Greene world’ largest toy collection. https://rockandrolljunkie.com/2015/02/26/4109/

 

 

World’s largest toy museum Branson. https://www.bransonshows.com/activity/WorldsLargestToyMuseum.cfm

 

Toy soldiers: https://www.metro.news/worlds-largest-toy-soldier-collection-makes-a-killing/1038350/

 

 

 

In Small Things Forgotten; A Doll Museum Closes and an Auction Takes Place

Collectibles and collecting appear in Pym's work all the time, especially in the escapades of Leonora Eyre and in the bits of pieces gentlewomen and near gentlewomen keep in their cozy flats.  Pym writes of Cycladic idols, Faberge eggs, obsessions with milk bottles, plastic bags, taxidermy, and soap animals. Her characters appreciate art and jumble sales, and Quartet in Autumn is discussed in Susan Pearce's The Collector's Voice: Modern voices.  Here is a piece about the end of a collector's life and dream.

********************************************************************

This weekend, Theriault’s will be hosting two amazing auctions.  Sunday is a very unusual and complete collection of Barbies and friends.  Saturday involves the sale of the contents of Yesterday’s Child Doll Museum, formerly Vicksburg, MS. Both will be in Chicago ,and Theriault’s.com has all the details.

 

During the late 80s, when I was just out of school, my family and I took a terrific trip down South, which included Vicksburg.  We walked the battlefield, and while I personally do not believe I ghosts, I did sense a presence there.  It was moving and sad to see the Civil War monuments put up by northern and southern states, and to realize how closely camped both sides were on that field.

 

We also saw Yesterday’s Child, just my mom and dad and me.  I’m the only one left.  I think it was the last of our great road trips, though we took a lot of smaller ones in later years.  It was charming, and a very pleasant day.  I still regret we didn’t buy a small composition doll wearing a white faux fur coat, hat, and muff in the gift shop  They did not have much for sale, but the museum was a feast for the eyes.

 

My dad, ever loyal to me exclaimed as we walked in, “she has more than this!” That was Dad; he also built doll houses, hauled us all over to buy dolls while he sat in the car, he brought dolls for me from all over the world, carved little dolls from sticks, carried two very large Italian dolls for me when we were coming back from a trip to Europe.  He often drove back out of his way so I could get a doll I forgot to buy, and he learned what a Jumeau was.  My mom was my partner in crime when it came to finding dolls; she also dressed them repaired them. After a while, it wasn’t “Ellen’s” doll collection; it was “our” doll collection.

 

I hate to see any doll museum close, especially when I am busy creating mine, but this one’s closing is particularly painful for me.  The silver lining is that the dolls will go to good homes, to people who will care for them and carry on the museum’s legacy.  For me, doll collecting has become a lonely hobby, full of lovely memories. 

Memoir; Writing your Life Story: Memories of Autumn

Memoir; Writing your Life Story: Memories of Autumn: From my Dr. E's Greening Tips Blog:  https://dresgreening.blogspot.com/




Something to accompany your rereading of Quartet in Autumn.

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: Online Literary Magazine for CM 220, CM 107 Classe...

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: Online Literary Magazine for CM 220, CM 107 Classe...: Online Literary Magazine for CM 220, CM 107 Classes and Friends of KU: Guest Blogger: Dr. David Levy, Author and Astrono... :   It is an...

Brontes Bicenntennial

2018 marks the 200th anniversary of Emily Bronte's birth.  The September issue of Victoria Magazine features a lovely photo spread of Haworth, the Bronte sisters' home. October's issues will have a story on Louisa May Alcott.  Charlotte's bicentennial has come, and Anne's is forthcoming.  


More to come, but I wanted everyone to see this magazine, given the chance.


Also, The Victorian Trading Company has many Jane Austen items, including socks, books, and games.  This is a fun catalog for anyone who loves things from the early 1900s and much earlier.


Happy reading; I'm leading the discussion on Wuthering Heights for AAUW in November; I'll keep you posted!

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Coupons, Paper Dolls, Paying it Forward!

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Coupons, Paper Dolls, Paying it Forward!: A gentleman I know works at our local Jewel grocery. Jewel has been part of Chicago ’s Dominick’s chain and is a cut above other chains ...

How to Join a Doll Club - Ruby Lane Blog

How to Join a Doll Club - Ruby Lane Blog: There’s more fun as well as safety in numbers. Collecting dolls is as social as it gets; great shows, conventions, shopping trips, museum tours, “collection hops,” the fun never ends. So, how do you find like-minded doll friends to share your hobby with? Join a doll club! Here’s how.

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Rescued Open House 2018

A modern bring and buy or jumble sale!! Pym loved cats; she would be there!




Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Rescued Open House 2018: Rescued Open House September 22, 10-4; September 23, 12-4   Come celebrate with Rescued , and perform good deeds while you s...

Pulitzer, Roxanne, and Kathleen Maxa. The Prize Pulitzer. New York: Ballantine, 1987.

Pulitzer, Roxanne, and Kathleen Maxa.  The Prize Pulitzer. New York: Ballantine, 1987.

 

First, since I am a writer myself, I’d like to give my own unsolicited advice, not the opinion of Blogger, GoodReads, or anyone else.  Don’t be so impressed with the Pulitzer Prize; buy one of poor Lily’s bracelets instead.   I wouldn’t be so leased with being its winner after reading about its origins and descendants.  This sordid bunch of poor little rich children seems to exist to destroy other people’s lives, especially if those people are young women.

 

True, generally, there are two sides to every story, but not this one.  It’s unfair to label a woman as a gold digger because the history of marriage itself encourages “gold digging” or marriage as a career goal, perhaps the only one for women.  I’d even call it legalized prostitution at its worst. Think.

 

In the Ancient World, marriage was a political treaty, meant to seal the fate of nations and produce heirs. Review the sad history of Henry VIII and his wives. As he says in one of the many literary accounts of the marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn, Henry didn’t marry Catharine [of Aragon]; England married Spain.  Remember Princess Diana was hailed for producing the “heir and a spare!”  Or, there’s the first Empress of Iran, wife of the modern, exiled Shah.  They were compelled to divorce because she couldn’t have children.

 

In many cultures “loss of consortium” is grounds for divorce.  That means, you are not performing sexually, or performing “wifely duties.”  Usually, it’s someone else’s fault.  Nonperformance is due to injury caused by a third party, but it could be something peculiar to the individual spouses.  Maybe it works both ways where a husband is concerned, but I don’t want to go off topic. 

 

According to Coventry Patmore’s “The Angel of the House”, women were meant to marry,  to suffer childbirth, take care of everyone else, and yet be childlike and submissive as Hubby’s little angel.  Patmore’s poem could have been the updated script for Herbert Pulitzer’s guide to marriage.  He isn’t alone; his pal Jim Kimberly is mentioned, as is many other crazy rich couple with nothing in common but their coke and their cocktails.  Lolita, anyone?

 

Roxanne Pulitzer was the ultimate submissive wife; if she enjoyed the perversions her husband encouraged, well, isn’t that the Patmore school of happy marriage?  Just read the books on the topic, fiction and nonfiction.  In Othello, poor Desdemona gets creamed just because of insinuations. Kate has to curb her strong personality after all kinds of emotional abuse and games are forced on her in The Taming of the Shrew. 

 

In “real life”  genius Sor Juan Ines de la Cruz went to the convent rather than enter an arranged marriage.

 

Barbara Pym’s novels, letters, and journals are a study of unsuitable attachments and male/female relationships of all kinds.  She would have had an entire saga based on the Pulitzer trial.  For starters, read Excellent Women, An Unsuitable Attachment, and No Fond Return of Love.  Pym realized that despite her love stories, there was often no happy ever after for the heroine.  Sometimes, the quest for a woman to lead a full life involved filing that Holy Grail, something to love.  Something to love could be a vocation, friendship, love of animals, or other passion.  It didn’t have to be a man, husband, or family.  As another writer, Vera Brittain put it, anyone can have a baby; only I can write my books. Virginia Woolf would have called it finding a room of one’s own.

 

Contact me if you want to know more about these authors.

 

 

In several Ancient Cultures widows were burned on funeral pyres, otherwise killed, or just cast out.  Women beyond childbearing age were of no value at all.  Marriage was the only hope, and a well suited one at that. Hello!! Jane Austen’s everything, C. Bronte’s Jane Eyre, E. Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.  Sheila Jeffries’ study, The Spinster and Her
Enemies, Greer’s The Female Eunuch, Susan Faludi’s Backlash, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique,  the history around the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, the history behind the suffragettes, the century’s old persecution of women as witches, still going on in parts of the world today; it’s everywhere. All these texts explore the topic of misogyny and marriage.  So do Title VII, and the many cases and legal treatises dealing with sexual harassment ad discrimination.

 

Marry and listen to your husband, or else.  Don’t read A Vindication of the Rights of Women, or even Miguel de Unamuno’s Nada menos de todo un hombre. Stay away from historical texts like The Plantation Mistress and A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

 

Roxanne Pulitzer had been married before Pulitzer, and it didn’t work out.  She was young and inexperienced.  It happens.  Her life was unremarkable; she had worked, tried marriage, and underwent trials many young women of the 70s and 80s struggled with

 

These struggles threw her into the path of her famous husband, whose family worked menial jobs as entertainment when they were bored, while others fought to get those jobs to survive.  While his obituary exalted him as a philanthropist, sportsman, business man, etc., he was another rich, controlling playboy who got away with a lot of emotional abuse.

 

He had no business marrying a young woman who lacked his experience any more than Milton, whom I usually adore for his poetry, had any business marrying an illiterate 16 year old when he was 33 and spoke at least seven languages.  Mr. Kimberly had no business at 60 something marrying a 19 tear old he’d met when she was 17.  She later committed suicide in her late fifties, after her apartment roommate and friend, another woman, died.  Kimberly tried twice to divorce his wife, and he succeeded the second time.

 

The Judge who wrote the Pulitzer opinion, published at the end of the book, was arcane in his thinking.  The standard even then was that the divorced wife receive enough monetary support to maintain the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed during the marriage.  He took the word of the husband in this case, without looking to the evidence that must have been everywhere about the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous in his jurisdiction. Mr. P was no angel, and his own drinking, cocaine use, and predilection for threesomes should have found its way into the testimony.

 

Instead, a naïve young woman who couldn’t have had those experiences on her previous salary  was vilified.  He didn’t want to pay child support, the old cheapskate, and he wanted to hide his oedipal problems with his daughter from a previous marriage, so he sacrificed his wife. 

 

Similar cases in the same time period declared that a mother was still presumed to be the custodial parents under the tender year’s doctrine, lifestyle notwithstanding.  It was clear he didn’t want his kids even on family vacations, while she wanted the boys with her.  A mother’s lifestyle does not interfere with a custody award to her unless it can be shown it affects her children adversely.  That finding was lacking and weak in the Pulitzer case.

 

Anyone who wants to read more case law, let me know.  I have gobs from Prof. S’ family law class, which I was taking when this trial was going on.

 

During the Renaissance, there was a backlash against aristocratic women speaking their minds; they could only do it in the face of impending death, or if they were deemed mad.  Scolds bridles and other fun toys existed to shut them up.  Read the works of Lady Jane Grey, the little Anne Boleyn left behind, Catharine of Aragon’s last letter, Mary Cary’s plays, the letters of Jane Anger, and their biographers and editors like Mary Ellen Lamb and Ann Rosalind Jones.

 

500 years later, or so, we see this stifling of “wealthy” women taking place in the Pulitzer trial.  Eerily, it was the legal “foreplay” foreshadowing the O.J. Simpson murder trial that would occur some seven years later, when the victim, Nicole Simpson’s lifestyle was put on trial.  Ironically, Simpson is mentioned in The Prize Pulitzer briefly.

 

Furthermore, Ms. Pulitzer was chastised by the Judge and it seems the public, for dating after divorce papers were filed.  This should never have been brought up.  Once the papers are filed, that’s it.  Matters of custody and alimony are left to be worked out.  Unless they can prove her after divorce-filing dates caused the break up in the marriage, hands off!  If Ms. Pulitzer’s friend were involved in the divorce, it would have been mentioned in the original papers first filed. 

 

Even more medieval is the judge’s insistence on making Ms. Pulitzer’s religious beliefs an issue. I know I am being simplistic, but boys and girls, even judicial boys and girls, please read The First Amendment, and all of the legal analysis it has caused to be published.  Religious practice can be monitored and controlled, e.g., human sacrifice is no longer allowed.  Belief, however, cannot be punished. Pulitzer was obviously punished at least in part, for what she believed.

 

So, the double standard lives on. Roxanne Pulitzer seems to have moved on and found peace, her twin boys are grown, their father gone recently to his heavenly reward.  Hers was indeed a cautionary tale that could have been part of  The Canterbury Tales.  She has survived the “cruel world of the very rich”  (Author Pat Booth’s review) and managed to support herself and maintain her sanity.  We wish her the best.

 

As the Village Voice said, “Might not win The Prize Pulitzer, but does have the dish heavenly.”

 

 

Art at the MacNider

Photos by Me

There Is No House Without A Doll - Ruby Lane Blog

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Housekeeping Tips inspired by Laura Ingalls Wilder, be House Livable,not House Beautiful

So, today, I ate well but badly.  My customary oatmeal and coffee, which is the “well.”  Lunch, the best and worst of times.  Iced cold brew with half and half and splenda, goat cheese spread with spicy peach jam and sliced almonds with a mini, sliced French bread loaf, and a flowerless slice of chocolate tort.  That was the bad.  Bread is  in honor of French doll artist Bernard Ravca, who used French bread crumbs to create fantastic character dolls, among cloth and other media.

 

Bad because of the heat, though it is better, and a painful knee.  At my favorite coffee shop, there is no where to elevate it, more bad.  Sill I a rash, still allergies.  But, my family is well, and I puttered this morning around the house, accomplishing small thing, noting what needs to be done.

 

Tips; like Laura Ingalls Wilder in Little House in the Ozarks, you can’t do it all.  We are not House Beautiful; ok, there is  great wall display here, a worthy bookshelf there. A doll house in great order.  Yet with a teenaged boy, a husband [another teenaged boy], two cats, a nasty  back injury, bad knee and dust allergies, you do the math.

Public Domain

 

I have a great friend who helps me inside, and as nice many who does the lawn and garden, except for little things I do.  But, here’s my tips for keeping the house livable, not beautiful.

 

1. Clean up as you cook.
2. Watch the litter box and keep it fresh.
3. Make the beds; it makes you feel sane and accomplished.
4. Go around and tidy up, couch cushions, doilies, do some spot dusting.
5. Do spot cleaning, a little sweeping and vacuuming where needed.  Knock down cobwebs.
6. ic up clothes off the floor.
7. Take out garbage several times a day, fi needed.
8. Get little blue thing to put on the rim of the toilet.  They help.  Swish it out frequently and flush and run even plumbing you don’t use often.
9. Stack books and magazines  Go through them and organize them.
10. Deep clean one manageable art of a room at a time.
11. Don’t stress and take breaks.

 

Hope this helps!

 

 

Lady Lazarus

Sylvia Plath

 

The notes below reflect my thoughts and opinions, based on a lot of reading on Plath that I did in the 70s and 80s.  They are no one else’s opinions.

Public Domain

 

She has inspired my own poetry and writing; I see the positive in her, the multitalented girl who had it all,  who loved to dress well, was a model, a writer, an A student, a good cook, an artist.  She could, as one biographer put it, make any space her own.   She had it all,  or seemed to if you looked at the spread Life Magazine did on her.   Then, there were the breakdowns, the depressions, the misunderstood treatments.  Olive Prouty put it best when she entreated Plath not to “burn too brightly,” bright flame that she was. Gifted children are often like that; they burn too brightly. I have a son like that; he has burned brightly, and suffered a lot of misunderstanding.  Thankfully, he doesn’t have Plath’s depression.

 

Still my favorite poet, and in many ways, favorite writer.  She’s been drowned and saved again and again from the politically correct cesspool.  Poets, famous ones, usually men, who write and read loud poems about women beheading their children, decry her for committing suicide when her children were in the house.  Newsflash; she taped the door so the gas wouldn’t get to them.

 

It was a minefield to write about her in graduate school; that’s why I went back to graduate school.  Instead, she got a nod in my dissertation, and later, my book on  Pym. Path deserves more than a nod; she was an excellent woman, and perfect in nearly everyway, except her emotions and psyche were mortal.

 

I was told in grads school by a teacher who wrote three pages on her in an anthology, a self proclaimed expert, that anything I published or wrote on Plath would have to include her name.  She then asked me if I were “Jewish or just curious.” My aunt is Jewish, I’m Greek Orthodox, others in my family are Catholic, Pentecostal, Memorial Christian Church, and in the case of two baby cousins Moslem.  My family is a lot of things, but I will say there is a close connection between Judaism and the Greek Orthodox Church. Our Easter, Pascha, means “Passover,” and has to follow Passover by so many days.  Part of our church is set up like a Temple, and Father Bernstein, who founded Jews for Jesus, became an Orthodox priest.  I will provide sources for all this later; I’m not writing from memory and thought.

 

This distasteful woman terrorized our whole department; I got out from under her, but it wasn’t easy.  Her comment was offensive and ignorant; Plath did write about The Holocaust, but I and several biographers, note she felt guilt.  Her father was from the part of Germany that ran into Poland. Again, I’ll check my sources, but look up Otto Plath’s biography.

 

Her late husband was not innocent; though lots of people have tried to wash their hands of her and her death.  Rumor had it that if you quoted Plath’s work, you had to submit your thesis or book to TH for “approval.”  Many think he was a murder; I’ve read respected biographies that talk about discrepancies at her inquest, and the fact that she had signed divorce papers before her death.  These have not surfaced to my knowledge.  Close friends stated that right before her death she was dressing up and going out, was not despondent, etc.

 

She and TH are both gone; they have to sort it out, but after Plath, he did have a girl friend who also gassed herself, as well as their child.  Again, I can get you the sources.

 

TH allegedly had a gag order on Aurelia Plath, Sylvia’s mother, and she had to beg permission to publish Letters Home.  TH and his sister nearly destroyed Anne Stevenson’s reputation when she wrote “Bitter Fame.” At one point, the author stated it was their book more than hers, so heavily did they edit.

 

Watch the Voices and Visions segment on her, done in the 80s, where famous poets interviewed basically kept saying “it wasn’t my fault; I couldn’t do anything.”  Hardly anyone discussed her talent or work.  The same poets criticized her when she lived in e
England, at one point, in WB Yeats’ old house.  They made fun of her appetite, saying she downed foie gras “like Aunt Dot’s meatloaf”, and ridiculed her when her family sent her a new American stove because the one she had in Europe was too primitive.

 

I was born in Europe, and I have European relatives.  Their jealously and viciousness is contagious and deadly.  Their resentment of Americans, even their own families, is sad and epic.  My mother, an American who lived in Europe, even to being caught in WWII on a visit, had similar issues.  Her in-laws expected her to pay their bills, and her own family sent her American coffee, laundry detergent, and diapers, because at the time, what was available was lousy quality.  Shame on Mom for trying to make the best of things, and for having a family who cared.  Shame on Plath’s family for doing the same.

 

So, these are my thoughts on a genius, talented wife and mother, who left us too soon.  I’m sure many of us would like to know what happened to her.  But despite a lot of efforts to claim her as a political effigy or to villainize her, her words speak for her.  She will live on, as long as there are books and people to read them. Like Lady Lazarus, she rises again.

10 Clues You Might Be a Doll Addict - Ruby Lane Blog

10 Clues You Might Be a Doll Addict - Ruby Lane Blog: On the Dolls Lane, we live and breathe dolls all day, every day. It’s safe to say that we are doll addicts. If you’ve heard the saying, ‘it takes one to know one,’ let us know if any of these telltale clues apply to you! 1.    You tell your fiancé that you would rather have... Read more »

So, you Want to Write a Book!

Part I:

 

 So, you want to write a doll book? As a free lance writer on many topics, I hear a lot of what people want to write about. I’ve read guides and doll collecting books by people who write for magazines, but who are not collectors or even antique people.  Some are adequate; they repeat the arty lines about collectible doll types and books.  Some are just badly done and don’t contain helpful features like indices and Tables of Contents.

 

I love to write and I love dolls. I’ve been writing since I was ten, when I was part of a kids writing club in the neighborhood.  I’ve collected dolls since I was three, and got my first doll book at age 7; it was “Dolls” by john Noble.

 

It seemed natural at one point that I would end up writing articles and books about dolls.

 

Ever since I received Carl Fox’s “The Doll” as a gift, I dreamed of writing a photo study of my own collection.  That probably supported me on more than anything. I’ve always enjoyed reading books about other peoples’ collections, and have thought it was wonderful when they wrote beautiful color essays about them. Kay Desmonde's dolls and her various books with their carefully constructed backdrops of perfectly scaled furniture and accessories really inspired me.

 

Reading about dolls and nearly everything else led me to studying literature, so that in college, I double majored in English and Spanish, and read the literature of both. I began to write more poetry and served ion the editorial board of our literary magazine, SAGA, and on the board of an “underground” college lit mag called “An Ounce of Civet.

 

Just after graduating from college, I decided to try my hand at publishing an article on doll collecting, and had “Confessions of a Collector’ accepted for now out of print, "National Doll World."  I was so excited that I had the article framed. 

 

Little by little, I started getting articles about dolls published in other magazines including "Doll Reader", "Doll News", "Adventures; The Illinois Travel Magazine", "Western Doll Collector, and Hope and Glory: The Midwestern Journal of Victorian Studies."

 

I confess there is something thrilling about seeing your name in print.  Occasionally, I even got a “fan letter’ form another writer or doll collector.

 

When I finally got out of graduate school the first round, I got the idea of writing a book about dolls.  Of course, it had been done many times over, so I looked at types of dolls, all kinds of books, doll magazines, doll newsletters, encyclopedia articles, old fashioned card catalogs, and doll catalogs.  I decided on metal dolls and dolls with metal parts because no one had ever tackled those subjects together in book form.  Little did I know what I would start.  During my second round of graduate school, I hit on the idea of writing a book length bibliography of dolls, not just books about dolls, but all types of media that mentioned dolls and toys.

The book on metal dolls took me 25 years to finish and publish, and it took three publishers and all kinds of revision.  The bibliography, “A Bibliography of Doll and Toy Sources,” now on Kindle as well, took over 17 years.

 

Metal Dolls: Part II

 

I think I felt sorry for metal dolls when I was little.  At 9, my mother gave me "The Complete Book of Doll Collecting" by renowned artist and author Helen Yung.  Mrs. Young made dolls sold by Kimport for many years, and you can still find them advertised in vintage issues of Kimport’s own publication, “Doll Talk.”

 

Mrs. Young addressed Minerva, Juno, and Diana metal heads in a chapter she titled “Dolls Called Secondaries.” These included celluloid dolls and half dolls.  Like the metal dolls, these dolls were secondaries because they were sleepers that other collectors had not yet discovered.  She advised new collectors to include a few examples in their collections.

 

Young also wrote a chapter on automata and mechanical dolls with amazing stories of their own.  There was a marionette clad in real armor representing Joan of Arc that I loved; Joan of Arc was another of my youthful interests; I read and watched everything I could about her. There was a whistling Bru rescued from a French convent after World War II that had belonged to a young girl in the French Resistance; the girl was shot as a spy.  “The Complete Book of Doll Collecting” was also the first place I had ever read about Schoenhuts.  The little girl with short, dark bobbed hair and overalls featured reminded me of Scout from my favorite book, “ To Kill a Mockingbird.”

 

It was as if the author was channeling me to continue her research and write a book on these dolls she loved, but others ignored. 

 

When I was 8, my Brownie troop visited another doll collection in our neighborhood.  Mrs. Wellman had  perfect Minerva metal doll twins, blonde, dressed in light blue cotton bustle dresses, trimmed in fine lace.  She considered them the best of her collection, which also contained many china heads, antique bisques, miniature, and Madame Alexanders ,including all of the Sound of Music set.

 

It got me thinking.

 

Also, when you want to write a book, it is a good idea to try to find something others have not written about.  There was a plethora of doll publications when I started to research.   I had a pretty big library of books, so I started with them. Interlibrary Loan was a huge help, and in the early days of the modem, I asked one of our librarians to do a ten minute Internet search.

 

After I got the results of the Internet search,  I invested in a stash of 3x5 and 4x6 note cards.  I took notes on each card, clearly noting the quotations, names of authors, publication dates, and titles of books.  I decided on how to organize the book, and then took notes on each category.  Soon, I wrote an outline based on the categories I had created. 

 

It took weeks to organize my books and note cards.  I went from using a shoebox to store my research, to accordion files and a plastic folio for pictures, to a filing cabinet, to several book cases.  I had the accordion file for articles, letters, and correspondence, and the folio for pictures.

 

Illustrations were the hardest part of writing about dolls.  By the late 80s, publishers had become very picky and collectors and museums very selfish.  No other way to put it.  In the past, when I needed a photo or a quote from someone, I politely wrote to ask them and contacted them via their publisher.  I never had an editor or publisher refuse to forward a letter.  I also checked "Contemporary Authors" by Gale Publishing, and wrote to some authors directly.

 

Part III More Research:

 

By writing to editors, I was able to contact Mary Hillier, who became my very good friend and penpal. We wrote about 2 letters a month to each other for 14 years until she died.  I also met Mr. R. Lane Herron, who is still a good friend and correspondent.  Through Mary, I wrote to Dorothy Coleman and others.

 

At first, the editors of the old “Dolls” were very enthusiastic. They were full of tips and forwarded letters for me, and of course, I offered to pay postage. Then, quite suddenly, KPG, who had just become an editor, refused to forward letters to John Noble, Faith Eaton, and Lenon Hoyte.  They were my last three letters.  She also refused to help me contact them.  I wrote to their book publishers, but never got an answer.   Soon after, the magazine began publishing its own pieces on mechanical and metal dolls.

 

I had one noted author plagiarize my work; no, she didn’t answer my letter.  The assistant editor of the magazine removed her next two articles on metal dolls.

 

Mrs. Coleman answered my first letter tersely; she thought I had misspelled Janet Pagter Johl’s name as Janice. I hadn’t.  Later, Mary Hillier “interceded” for me and Mrs. Coleman was very helpful.  She told me that the Huret metal head was in the collection of Dorothy Dixon.

 

I asked Mrs. Dixon if I could pay to have a photo taken of the doll; she sent me a beautiful card with an antique doll on it.  I still have it.  She refused to send me a picture because she “had other plans for her doll.” Then, she died.

 

If anyone knows the whereabouts of the pewter head Huret, please, let me know!  I had to sketch the doll from a photograph in “Doll News.” The authors of that series of articles were very nice, but they no longer owned the Huret, and had no influence on Ms. Dixon.

 

Needless to say, I didn’t give up. My dad photographed my own dolls in black and white.  I asked around a located a photographer who took pictures for me as a challenge.  He refused to take my money, so when I lived in California, I sent him a lovely Christmas gift.

 

Another friend located the photos of Christine Nilsson and her dolls and others let me have photos and take them.  A couple of the dealers I know gave me metal heads for the book and for my collection.  Artists and jewelers talked to me about the lost wax method and of the metals they enjoyed working with.

 

Of course, life went on. I published articles on many other types of dolls, and other things. I moved to California, back home, and back to graduate school.  I took all my notes and manuscripts with me, but not my books.  My mother kept track of them and the dolls for me, or I never would have finished.

 

By the early 90s, the “book” had been published in a series of articles, primarily in "Doll Reader" magazine. DR had been very good to me over the years, and very helpful.  I owe a lot to the advice of Chris Revi and Catherine Cook.  Mary Hillier sent photos, addresses, notes, and ideas, as well as articles from England.  She also proofread my manuscript, along with my dissertation on Barbara Pym.  My friend the late Angela Wells, a well known novelist, also read and edited, and was full of ideas for general tips.  I lost an article to one magazine along with priceless photos.  They had no clue what happened to it.  The then editor of “National Doll World” got snotty about the professional photographs an award winning professor of photography had taken for me.  She knew I taught college level English, and quipped that she didn’t want “college kids” playing with cameras taking photos.  Somehow, she found the name of a local photographer and paid for him to take pictures.  He did a mediocre job, but at least Ms. Snooty was satisfied, but I didn’t use those photos in the final book.

 

Next, after I met and married my husband, who is a photographer and computer guru, the publication process speeded up.

 

The manuscript had been typed and proofed again by Dad, and the folks at now defunct Pip printing who were terrific.  I wrote and mailed several book proposals, long detailed outlines with sample chapters and photos.  Remember, I had to type most of these.  I didn’t have a word processor till the late 90s, and got a computer with Internet later.  My friends at JnJ dolls were great about giving me ideas, and I was able to chat with doll greats like Dorothy McGonagle and Florence Theriault on the old Hobby Central Doll Folders in the early days of AOL.

 

I was also writing a lot of other books and articles, finished my Masters and PhD., wrote a book on Barbara Pym, and chapters for books on Virginia Woolf, Anne Rice and The Harlem Renaissance.  I sent the book to The Popular Press which ultimately closed, to my alma mater, to Dover Books, Crown, Hobby House Press, and others.  No luck. About 3 years ago, 918studio typeset the book and prepared to publish it.  They were the gracious publishers of my poetry chapbook, “Sappho, I should have Listened.”  My photos travelled cross country and back, and my husband took up the painstaking task of editing.

 

We set up our own publishing group called American Doll and Toy Corp, and proceeded to contact Fidlar-Doubleday/ now Brandt-Doubleday, and had the book printed.  They also did my bibliography, which I’ll discuss below in the next article.

 

All of this required a lot of research, foot work, Internet searches and phone calls.  I visited a lot of doll shows and museums, studied marketing books, publishers’ literature, and writing journals.  We published our book in May 2013.  I excerpted it and featured it on my blogs, Doll Museum, Dr. E’s Doll Museum, Dr. E’s Greening Tips for the Common Person, An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory, Memoir, Writing your Life Story and Miss Barbara Pym meets Miss Charlotte Bronte.

 

Part IV:

 

At the Midwest Modern Language Association convention, I presented a paper on “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” and automatons. A group of my metal dolls, automatons, and robots travelled to a display at The German American Heritage Center, and I did two programs on the dolls, one that involved local readings from poets and writers in our area. We wrote the group poem, “Hinges and Hearts."

 

Along the way, I picked up a few rivals, one in particular, was determined to copy my work.  Others tried to get my printed manuscript and my pictures.  Never hand over unpublished material like this to anyone, not even your best friends.  If it is printed and copyrighted [which it technically is as son as it is published, then use your own discretion].  The book is now featured on Doll Pile, my Twitter page, My Facebook page Dr. E’s Doll Museum, and it is for sale on Alibris and Amazon.  Four local stores and one museum carry it, and it is doing very well.  I am thankful to Mr. Barry Mueller of  "Doll Castle News" and to Donna Kaonis of "Antique Doll Collector", who gave it such good reviews, and to the five star reviews I’ve received on Amazon.  My friend and penpal, Anne Marie Porot was also helpful when I was writing, and she sent a nice email after I mailed her a copy, stating she thought it was the first book of its kindl  Thank you, Anne Marie, and Galerie Chartres, who sent me a catalog as research.

 

The Internet has made publishing much easier than it was, especially Independent Publishing, but this kind of research is till a long haul.  If you have had experience publishing a book on dolls, especially as an Independent Publisher, we’d love to hear from you!

 

 

 

 

 

Ruby Lane Doll Talk: New Acquisitions to The Grovian Doll Museum

The Nanny and Mr. Sheffield, Niles and C.C., Hermia and Lysander, Pyramus and Thisbe

A Midsummer Night's dream is a mirror for couples and their foibles; Pym certainly was familiar with it, and The Bard allegedly was writing Romeo and Juliet at the same time, throwing in yet another comparison.  I toss out the idea that in Fran Drescher's sitcom The Nanny, she and Mr. Sheffield are a Hermia/Lysander combination [with shades of Theseus and Hyppolita], while Niles and C.C. are the Pyramus and Thisbe couple that adds comic relief.  The children are the Greek Chorus.

Mr. Sheffield is handsome as Lysander, but like Theseus, he takes himself a little too seriously.  Remember Theseus saying he doesn't believe in old Greek Fables, yet he is one. Fran is like an Amazon because she engages in along struggle with C.C. over Max Sheffield.  's

C.C. plays Thisbe to Niles' Pyramus because while she may seem more like Lady Macbeth, she is still a little girl with a crush, a little socially inept, and not quite knowing who her true love is. 

Pym would love the entire sitcom; it goes beyond Cinderella in celebrating unsuitable attachments. There are Shakespearean and Jane Eyre allusions throughout The Nanny; they even stage a hiliarious production of Romeo and Juliet. Broadway actors, real ones, also play bit parts in the show.

Truly, the play is still the thing.

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: In Memoriam; St. Joan of Arc

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: In Memoriam; St. Joan of Arc: Yesterday marks the 588th year since the martyrdom of Joan, the Maid of Orleans.  Little is known of her early life, but much is surmised.  ...

Why We Need Dolls In Our Lives - Ruby Lane Blog

Why We Need Dolls In Our Lives - Ruby Lane Blog: Why We Need Dolls In Our Lives:  No culture has been without dolls. In some societies, the doll figures that remain seem to be more idol or ritual figures, but the same cultures refer to dolls as children’s toys.  They might be very simple compared to their idols or decorative figures, maybe a decorated twig... Read more »

What is writing?

What is writing?

 

Now that I’ve forsaken all else to write fulltime, I’ve actually had time to think about what I’m doing. 

 

In some ways, you are a writer, or you are not. You also have to love books and reading. You have to want to possess books, too.  You need to hold them, look at them.

 

Your biography becomes the sum of the volumes arranged on your book shelves.

 

You need to write down your ideas or they’re gone.  You learn to write on anything handy.  I wrote the first draft of this post in the blank pages located in the back of Larry McMurtry’s Books. My dissertation director wrote on envelope and scraps of paper.  These she arranged carefully and stored in larger envelopes, labeled and dated.  I did the same thing with PostIt notes, some inadvertently left in books I libraries all over the country.  I secretly hope someone will see them and add their own PostIts to the dialog.

 

Writing preserves one’s sanity.  Our characters are the voices I our heads; Playwrights, novelists, short story writers, poets, and lyricists have to entrap their characters on paper, or go mad.

 

If writing is madness, then I’ve been so all my life.  I’ve written and made up stories since I was a toddler, but in college, it hit me. I was a writer.  I to go beyond carefully crated papers, done in Spanish and English for grades.

 

It was in college that I started to love research too, and compiling bibliographies. Yet, there were books and stories beyond the assignments. If followed them, as I would tell my students to do later, and I amassed a large personal library, encouraged by my mother, who ever threw away book.

 

I soon wrote in different genres, exploring different authors, types of writing, just a I played different kinds of music on the piano. 

 

Then, I came to love the tools of writing: paper, notebooks, pens, pencils, all kids of writing supplies, even writing technology. I don’t see my self stopping.

 

We either write for craft, proofreading ads or writing for work, or for art, as  writers who want to be read, but whose goal is to write, not to publish for big money.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Memoir; Writing your Life Story: Books and Literary Life; Two Memoirs

Memoir; Writing your Life Story: Books and Literary Life; Two Memoirs: Lately, I've been reading Larry McMurtry's memoirs, the two books listed in the title.  He shows us what I've always believed, t...

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Guest Blog on Motiviation and Whole Journey; my Fr...

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Dolls Gotta Have Heart; Raggedy Ann, Legends, and History for Over 100 Years - Ruby Lane Blog

A doll who is herself an excellent woman!!







Dolls Gotta Have Heart; Raggedy Ann, Legends, and History for Over 100 Years - Ruby Lane Blog: Raggedy Ann has been a beloved doll and literary character for over 100 years.  Her face has graced countless story books, coloring books, paper dolls, toys, radios, canned goods, and posters about Diphtheria and Smallpox vaccinations.  Raggedy Ann and her brother, Raggedy Andy, have starred in their own animated films, and Raggedy Ann has flown... Read more »

Shirley Temple Performs Animal Crackers In My Soup

Ellen M. Tsagaris in France

Ellen M. Tsagaris link to French National Library and my entry for Barbara Pym

Why We Love Dollhouses (And You Should Too!) - Ruby Lane Blog

Pym was a fan of Denton Welch, and was aware of his love for doll houses.  Bronte, also, was fond of miniaturia, dolls, and doll houses.





Why We Love Dollhouses (And You Should Too!) - Ruby Lane Blog: The first dollhouses on record are probably the Dutch cabinet houses and Nuremburg doll houses, meant more for adults as cabinets of curiosities than for children.  The novel The Miniaturist is based on these. One great example that still survives is Mon Plaisir, from the 18th century. The Nuremberg House open, 1673 via Victoria and... Read more »

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Give us a Follow: Ruby Lane Dolls on Pinterest

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Nannies, Maids, Paralegals, Upstairs and Down; Will the Real Jane Eyre Please Stand Up?

The Nanny Cast, Public Domain

I admit one of my guiltiest pleasures is watching Fran Drescher in The Nanny, 90s sitcom that took the usual theme of Jane Eyre marrying Mr. Rochester to a new, hip dimension.  It takes her 5 years, but Fran Fine marries Mr. Sheffield, her prince charming, and in an interesting twist, Ms. C.C. Babcock, theater exec and accomplished in everyway but having a personality, marries the butler, Niles.


These are unsuitable attachments that work across class, annoying, nasally voices, and snotty upbringing. Pym would be in her heyday, and Ms. Fine is certainly not like Jane Eyre.  Nor would Mr. Rochester be grabbing at Jane, screaming "Miss Eyre!" as the often petulant Mr. Sheffield shouts "Ms. Fine!" when the going gets tough.  Yet, the writing is witty, the chemistry among all the actors fantastic, and the irony keeps it all fast paced.  The rest of the cast does its part, too, with additional guest stars, some incredibly famous, adding their own voice to the Peanuts Gallery.


Other shows that have attempted this male boss and female subordinate-servant romance include Gun Smoke, what is going on with Miss Kitty and Marshall Matt?  Then, there's I Married Dora, Perry Mason and Della Street [look up an article called "The Emotional Labor of Paralegals"], Castle and The Mentalist [maybe the woman didn't work for the man, but as coworkers, they ended up as love interests], Hunter, to a certain extent, The Courtship of Eddy's Father, and Ugly Betty.


There was even some upstairs-downstairs action going on in Dark Shadows  between Beth and Quentin.  Of course, literature is full of tragic, compromised women who yearned for and received an unsuitable attachment above their class.  Think Tess, if not all of Thomas Hardy [who, by the way, was happily married as far as we know], Madame Bovary,  Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, Anna Karenina, The Age of Innocence, All of Jane Austen, and of course, Pym's classic, An Unsuitable Attachment.

Public Domain

In one episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary Richards and Mr. Grant attempt to date, and in another, they appeared as a married couple in a shot of the casts' future.  There is an ION Christmas film based on a Cinderella theme; it seems never to have gone out of fashion.


After a lot of struggle and misunderstanding, these excellent women rule the roost behind the scenes in the case of Hazel and Alice of The Brady Bunch, or they somehow marry the lord of the manor and live happily ever after.


Do unsuitable attachments work?  Not always, not if you're Princess Diana.  Even suitable ones don't work in some cases, no, in a lot of cases.
Whatever happened to "grow old with me; the best is yet to be."  It isn't bad to have things in common, to marry the familiar.  No, I don't believe in impediments to true love, but I'm not sure I believe in fairy tales, either.