Florida Historical Society Rembert Patrick Award
The rich friendship of two remarkable women talking to each other in
letters
Exploring
the rich, enduring companionship shared by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Julia
Scribner Bigham through never-before-published letters,
Marge and Julia
provides a revelatory depiction of these two
literary women’s experiences in mid-twentieth-century America.
Pulitzer Prize–winning author
Rawlings was first introduced to Julia Scribner (later Bigham), daughter of
publishing magnate Charles Scribner III, shortly after the legendary Scribner House published
The Yearling
to
runaway success. Though Julia’s New York City life was far removed from the
rural world of Cross Creek, the two women remained close until Rawlings’s death
in 1953, after which Scribner Bigham served as Rawlings’s literary executor. In
this documentary edition of 211 of their letters, Rawlings’s and Bigham’s
perspectives on the world are woven through over a decade of intimate
discussion and advice about relationships, motherhood, mental health, politics,
art, and literature.
Supplementing
the letters with an introduction, explanatory footnotes, and a reminiscence by
Scribner Bigham’s eldest daughter, Hildreth Julia Bigham McCarthy, MD, this edition
provides historical context and prompts readers to inspect the facets of both
women’s complex relationship with issues such as racial discrimination, class,
and gender inequality. These letters offer an unprecedented performance of two
women’s intimate friendship, one that transcended the limitations of patriarchy
as they wrote their lives in letters.