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Paper short abstract

Nature’s rhythms, fairy storytellers, and writers’ craft provoke the family life of partners Henry Beston and Elizabeth Coatsworth. World travel and quotidian observation mark their creations from the Firelight Fairy Book and The Outermost House to The Cat Who Went to Heaven and Personal Geography.

Paper long abstract

In 2028 we celebrate the centennial of Henry Beston’s ode to the Great Beach of Cape Cod, his book The Outermost House. About a decade before Beston devoted a year to observing and writing about nature, he wrote two fairy-tale collections, The Firelight Fairy Book (1919) and The Starlight Wonder Book (1923). Beston selected both topics, the beach and fairy tales, in search of solace from his World War I ambulance-driving experience in France. Elizabeth Coatsworth, who married Beston in 1929, initiated her writing vocation with children’s books, including the 1931 Newbery-Medal-winning The Cat Who Went to Heaven, that begins “Once upon a time, far away in Japan.” This paper explores how and why fairy tales relate with the rhythms of tides and seasons, of farms and neighbors in the writings of this literary couple. The enchanted view and critical inquiry extend to the writings of their daughter Kate Barnes, the first poet laureate in the US state of Maine. What dreams, ambition, and perfectionism threaten to break mends along with care, words, a starry sky, and a family plot.

Please consider this paper for a Folk Narrative, Literature, and Media (FNLM) panel