The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright [Paperback]

Jean Nathan (Author)

Book Description

In 1957, a children’s book called The Lonely Doll was published. With its pink-and-white-checked cover and photographs featuring a wide-eyed doll, it captured the imaginations of young girls and made the author, Dare Wright, a household name. Close to forty years after its publication, the book was out of print but not forgotten. When the cover image inexplicably came to journalist Jean Nathan one afternoon, she went in search of the book--and ultimately its author. Nathan found Dare Wright living out her last days in a decrepit public hospital in Queens, New York. Over the next five years, Nathan pieced together Dare Wright’s bizarre life of glamour and painful isolation to create this mesmerizing biography of a woman who struggled to escape the imprisonment of her childhood through her art.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1957, The Lonely Doll made model/actress turned author/photographer Dare Wright famous. The children's book told the story of Edith, a lonely doll until two teddy bears—a father and son—come to live with her. This dark and painfully poignant biography, tells the story of the beautiful and creative Dare (1914–2001), who was separated from her own father and brother when she was three. Alone with her strong-willed, manipulative mother, Edie, Dare strove to please her, Nathan writes, "playing handmaiden to Edie's queen as Edie created their own private universe" of dressup and pretend. Their closeness becomes increasingly disturbing, keeping Dare a child even as she matures into womanhood. There's a suggestion by some who knew them of a sexual element in the relationship, but Nathan is careful not to speculate. With Edie's death near the end of the book the story loses some of its clarity, because despite having many friends, Dare doesn't know how to live without her mother; the downward spiral of her final years is horrifying yet incomprehensible. But this is a quibble, and doesn't detract from the fascinating and elusive girl/woman at the center of this story. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Most artists lead idiosyncratic existences, but few are stranger than that of Dare Wright, a beautiful and poignantly lost soul. With painstaking resolve, Jean Nathan has captured this elusive creature and, with compassion and empathy, brought her back to life. Her biography of Wright is a haunting tale, skillfully told."
-- Mark Singer, Author of Somewhere in America and staff writer, The New Yorker

"Jean Nathan has given us a haunting portrait of a haunted and heartbreaking creative life. Here is proof, if ever any was needed, that the children's books that last are those born not of lovely thoughts but of childhood's innermost necessities."-Leonard S. Marcus, author of Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon

"Reads like a novel, and a Gothic one at that, full of outsized characters, an evocatively drawn backdrop, and with a strange and compelling mystery at its heart."-Meg Wolitzer, author of The Wife

"A beguiling piece of detective work, which itself makes for a kind of fairy tale."-Stacy Schiff, author of Vera

"Although I never read The Lonely Doll as a child or saw Dare Wright's photographs, it's as if somehow I did. Nathan has done an amazing job to capture Wright's life on the page and to bring us into the household of one of the saddest dysfunctional families ever."-Cindy Sherman

"An evocative, amazing biography."-Jacki Lyden, author of Daughter of the Queen of Sheba

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Picador (July 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312424922
• ISBN-13: 978-0312424923
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #205,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The complex relationship between mother and daughter, September 3, 2004

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright (Hardcover)

Remember the seminal books of your youth? For journalist Jean Nathan, that book was THE LONELY DOLL. First published in 1957, with its pink and white gingham cover, this book featured photographs of a little blond-haired doll named Edith, and it put its author, Dare Wright, on the map. Almost 40 years later, with the book long since out of print, Nathan decided to find out a little more about its author. What she found saddened and shocked her.

First, she set about getting a copy of the book, which was no easy feat. After many attempts to locate Wright, Nathan simply opened the phone book and there was the author's address. It was with both anticipation and a little dread that she wrote to her. What if Wright was dead? Is it better not to know? Within a few weeks, she received her answer. Brook Ashley was a friend of the Wright family and explained that Dare was in a New York hospital on life support. Since there were no living relatives, Brook stepped in to act as her legal guardian. She was touched by Nathan's letter and began regaling her with the story of Dare's life.

Dare Wright was the second child born to Edith Stevenson and Ivan Wright in 1914. Both parents had artistic leanings. Wright was a failed actor and ultimately a theater critic, and Edith, known as Edie, desperately longed to study art abroad but was forced to abandon that dream when she married. Their first child was a son named Blaine. The family shuttled back and forth between Toronto and New York. Edie and Ivan's marriage was strained from the beginning and, after the children were born, quickly began to disintegrate. They divorced and Edie took young Dare and settled in Cleveland, while Blaine stayed with Ivan. Early on, the relationship between mother and daughter could best be described as oddly intense. Dare, being so young at the time of the split, was never told she had a brother and barely saw her father again. She learned of Blaine's existence much later, and the two got to be extremely close when Dare was a young woman living in New York City.

Because Edie was now a divorcee, Dare became her constant companion, accompanying her on trips to Europe and their annual summer jaunt to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Edie became a well-known and much sought-after portrait painter. Dare, who was always a beautiful girl, decided to move to New York City in the 1940s and pursue a career as a model. She did quite well, even gracing the cover of Cosmopolitan. Despite her steady modeling work, Dare always maintained outside interests, something she and her mother would practice on their many trips together. Dare picked up photography, probably from her mother, who frequently used Dare as a model, sometimes in provocative nude shots.

As she grew older and modeling jobs dwindled, Dare decided to create a children's book featuring photographs of her favorite doll, Edith, named after the most important and influential person in her life. Published in 1957, THE LONELY DOLL was a sensation and spawned a whole series that lasted into the early 1980s. Some of the better-known books include THE LONELY DOLL LEARNS A LESSON and EDITH AND MR. BEAR. The books often mirrored the loneliness and isolation Dare felt. With her controlling and all-consuming mother, her books were the only thing that she herself could control.

Nathan does a wonderful job of telling the story of Dare's (and by extension, Edie's) life and the complex relationship between mother and daughter, life and art. The intimacy, competitiveness, jealousy and loyalty that framed their lives paints a vivid but ultimately sad portrait of a woman who was never really free to live her own life and who found solace through her books. It's a riveting and well-researched book that engages the reader whether or not they are familiar with the book at its center.

--- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eccentric Bio, October 22, 2004

By 

Tricia (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright (Hardcover)

With out a doubt you are captured by the attention to detail of this book. Very hard to put down. Page after page of the extremely "Odd" relationship between mother and daughter. She can not seem to break away from this relationship, even for a moment. This is truly a rare and different type of story. One that will keep you guessing about just how deep the relationship is.
Memoirs to read: Nightmares Echo, Sickened,A Paper Life

34 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and remarkable book on an unusual subject, September 29, 2004

By 

Charismatic Creature (Anywheresville, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright (Hardcover)

I was interested in this book, because I am a doll collector and like the author Jean Nathan, I recall "Edith The Lonely Doll" from my childhood. I had no inkling of the strange and bizarre life of the author, Dare Wright -- presumably no one outside her small circle of friends and family could have known anything much about her. Without Ms. Nathan's interest -- remarkably she began investigating book and author just before Ms.Wright passed away enabling her to get photos and personal reminiscences that otherwise would have disappeared -- this would be a lost chapter in the history of children's literature. Bravo to Ms. Nathan for discovering and exploring this.

I simply could not put the book down. If Dare Wright's life were fiction, you would dismiss it out of hand as overblown, exaggerated and unbelievable. A beautiful model and gifted photographer, she lived in the shadow of her dominating mother (herself a hugely successful society painter) and was incapable of having a normal relationship with a man....excepting her obsessive, almost incestuous relationship with her brother Blaine.

As a child, I was fascinated by the Lonely Doll books although I never was given one to own. I must have read them at the library or book store, though, because I recall them very clearly. (Dare Wright produced sequels right up into the early 80s.) I was particularly fascinated by the concept of photographing dolls with props, which Ms. Wright accomplished with rare feeling and subtlety in black and white. I know as a youngster I tried to do the same with my Barbie's -- not an easy task! Ms. Wright had an very large and especially beautiful and photographic Lenci doll from her childhood to work with. Hearing the details of Dare Wright's astonishing and disturbing life makes the story of "The Lonely Doll" incredibly haunting and meaningful in a way I could have never seen it before.

There are a couple of books I recommend if you share my fascination with this: Lois Gould's "Mommy Dressing" about a very similar mother whose obsession with fashion and role playing was so destructive to the mother/child relationship. Anyone fascinated with dolls will also want to read Kate Summerscale's "Queen of Whale Cay", which is also about an eccentric woman who had an obsessive relationship with a large doll, who she dressed up and photographed much as Dare Wright did with her Lenci doll.

In addition, the remarkable and astonishing photographs that accompany the text in "Secret Life of the Lonely Doll" reminded me that the image of Edith the doll haunted me so much that at the age of 18 -- with my first earned money from a part time job -- I purchased not a stereo or concert tickets or clothes, but a Sasha Morgenthaler doll. Although no relation to Lenci, Dare Wright or Edith, the resemblance of these "Sasha" dolls to "The Lonely Doll" is astonishing -- same size, same hairdo, same gingham dress. I have never seen this resemblance commented on and I never even noticed it myself until I read this book....yet I feel quite certain that my purchase was spurred (like Ms. Nathan's of her literary subject) by some ancient memory of reading "Edith The Lonely Doll"!