At a time when most bird studies and illustrations were based on dead, stuffed specimens, Stratton-Porter mucked through the Limberlost in her swamp outfit in search of birds and nests to photograph:Ī picture of a Dove that does not make that bird appear tender and loving, is a false reproduction. One of the movement’s leaders, Ken Brunswick, remembered reading Stratton-Porter’s What I Have Done With Birds when he was young-a vibrant 1907 nature study that reads like an adventure novel. And with the water came the plants and bird life Stratton-Porter had described. In 1996, conservation groups, including the Limberlost Swamp Remembered Project and Friends of the Limberlost, began buying land in the area from farmers to restore the wetlands.
Stratton-Porter spent her life capturing the landscape before, in her words, it was “shorn, branded and tamed.” Her impact on conservation was later compared to President Theodore Roosevelt’s. Settlers took the land for timber, farming and the rich deposits of oil and natural gas. By the time she moved to the area, in 1888, this unique watery wilderness was disappearing because of the Swamp Act of 1850, which had granted “worthless” government-owned wetlands to those who drained them. Small agrarian communities were turning into industrial centers connected by railroads. She wrote at a pivotal point in American history. Her natural settings, wholesome themes and strong lead characters fulfilled the public’s desires to connect with nature and give children positive role models.
“She did things wives of wealthy bankers just did not do,” says Katherine Gould, curator of cultural history at the Indiana State Museum.
Nine of her novels were made into films, five by Gene Stratton-Porter Productions, one of the first movie and production companies owned by a woman. Gene Stratton-Porter wrote five of those books-far more than any other author of her time. Only 55 books published between 18 sold upwards of one million copies. Rowling is now, Stratton-Porter published 26 books: novels, nature studies, poetry collections and children’s books. This article is a selection of the March 2020 issue of Smithsonian magazine BuyĪ view from the cabin at Wildflower Woods, on the shores of Sylvan Lake, where Stratton-Porter spent her early 50s.Īs famous in the early 1900s as J.K. Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12 The artist was Gene Stratton-Porter, an intrepid naturalist, novelist, photographer and movie producer who described and dramatized the Limberlost over and over, and so, even a century after her death, served as a catalyst for saving this portion of it. It’s not obvious to the naked eye, but life here is imitating art imitating life. Today, a piece of the old Limberlost survives in the Loblolly Marsh Nature Preserve, 465 acres of restored swampland in the midst of Indiana’s endless industrial corn and soybean fields. He either returned alive or died in the quicksand and quagmires, depending which version you hear. Some say an agile man known as “Limber” Jim Corbus once got lost there. Nobody knows the true origin of the name. I am walking on a trail in a part of northeast Indiana that in the 19th century was impenetrable swamp and forest, a wilderness of some 13,000 acres called the Limberlost. More than ten feet tall, with a central taproot reaching even deeper underground, this plant, with its elephant-ear leaves the texture of sandpaper, makes me feel tipsy and small, like Alice in Wonderland. Yellow sprays of prairie dock bob overhead in the September morning light.
–Gene Stratton-Porter, l etter to Miss Mabel Anderson, March 9, 1923 Hereafter to tack the "ess" on to "author", because one who writesĪ book or poem is an author and literature has no sex. In the first place will you allow me to suggest that you forget