TINLING, Marion (Rose) 1904-

PERSONAL: Born December 17, 1904, in Richmond Hill, NY; daughter of Frank Newton (a contractor) and Nora (a nurse; maiden name, Sale) Goble; married Willis Tinling, 1930 (divorced, 1948); children: Jaime Rose Tinling Watson, Nora Tinling Hughes, Nicholas Graeme. Education: Attended Occidental College 1926-27; Keuka College, B.A., 1929. Politics: Democrat. Hobbies and other interests: History, women's rights.

ADDRESSES: Home—3225 Freeport Blvd., No. 512, Sacramento, CA 95818. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, typist, proofreader, editor, and secretary of publications, 1930-49; California State Department of Education, Sacramento, CA, editor, 1949-54; National Historical Publications Commission, Washington, DC, editor and transcriber of documents, 1954-62; California State Personnel Board, Sacramento, CA, social worker, 1963-70. Member of California State Personnel Board, 1962-63; founder, Meals a la Car, Sacramento, CA.

MEMBER: Renaissance Society, Sacramento Book Collectors, Grandmothers for Peace, Older Women's League (president, 1990), Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation.

AWARDS, HONORS: Guggenheim fellow, 1960; Woman in History citation, Sacramento History Museum, 1991; Keuka College Alumni Award, 1993.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Louis B. Wright) William Byrd, The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709-1712, Dietz Press (Richmond, VA), 1941.

(Editor, with Maude Howlett Woodfin) William Byrd, Another Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1739-1741, Dietz Press (Richmond, VA), 1942.

(Editor, with Louis B. Wright) Robert Hunter, Quebec to Carolina in 1785-1786: Being the Travel Diary and Observations of Robert Hunter, Jr., a Young Merchant of London, Huntington Library and Art Gallery (San Marino, CA), 1943.

(Editor, with Godfrey Davies) Harry Toulmin, The Western Country in 1793: Reports on Kentucky and Virginia, Huntington Library and Art Gallery (San Marino, CA), 1948.

(Editor, with Louis B. Wright) William Byrd, The London Diary, 1717-1721, and Other Writings, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1958.

(Editor) The Correspondence of the Three William Byrds of Westover, Virginia, 1684-1776, two volumes, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1977.

Women Remembered: A Guide to Landmarks of Women's History in the United States, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1986.

(Compiler and editor) Women into the Unknown: A Sourcebook on Women Explorers and Travelers, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1989.

(Compiler and editor) With Women's Eyes: Visitors to the New World, 1775-1918, Archon Books (Hamden, CT), 1993.

Sacajawea's Son: The Life of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Mountain Press (Missoula, MT), 2001.

Contributor to journals, including William & Mary Quarterly and Huntington Library Bulletin; contributor to Encyclopedia Britannica.

SIDELIGHTS: A former editor of historic documents, Marion Tinling has made several contributions to the late-twentieth-century field of women's history by compiling and presenting primary documents that reveal the contributions of forward-thinking and energetic women in many walks of life. In addition to such works as Women into the Unknown: A Source-book on Women Explorers and Travelers and With Women's Eyes: Visitors to the New World, 1775-1918, she has also authored a juvenile biography titled Sacajawea's Son: The Life of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, which was published in 2001. Of Tinling's Women Remembered: A Guide to Landmarks of Women's History in the United States, American Reference Book Annual contributor Catherine R. Loeb enthused: "This treasure trove of information . . . makes for fascinating browsing, serves as a valuable biographical dictionary, and extends to the women's history buff a tantalizing invitation to travel." Library Journal reviewer James Moffet praised the detailed work as "obviously a labor of love for the author."

Born in 1904, Tinling graduated from New York's Keuka College in 1929 before beginning her career as an editor and secretary of publications at San Marino, California's Huntington Library. "Over my nineteen years there, I was privileged to work with leading scholars in the fields of English and American history and literature," Tinling later recalled, "and there I got more education than I received in college."

At the Huntington Library, Tinling worked on scholarly editions of documents, among them several volumes of the collected diaries of eighteenth-century writer William Byrd of Virginia. After her retirement, she found time to pursue her personal interest: the growing area of women's history. "My object was to 'write women back into history,'" Tinling explained, maintaining that "history as taught in high schools and colleges has ignored women's contributions. The result has been that women in our society are considered minor figures of little account and not deserving of equality to men. This attitude must change if civilization is to improve."

Published in 1989, Women into the Unknown features writings by such noted women adventurers as nineteenth-century Englishwoman Isabel Bird Bishop and U.S. photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White as well as a host of others, among them Egyptian explorer Florence von Sass Baker and mountaineers Violet Cressy-Marcks, Elizabeth Sarah Mauchelli, and Annie Smith Peck. Covering forty-two world adventurers whose travels spanned both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the book was praised by Library Journal contributor Olga Wise as a "valuable compilation" due to Tinling's detailed essays and useful list of available resource materials. In a Choice review of Women into the Unknown, G. J. Martin praised the author for essays that "will variously intrigue, interest, and fascinate readers," while in Booklist, contributor Sandy Whiteley found "the description of the fortitude and determination of the women . . . fascinating."

The impressions of British- and European-born world travelers such as Fanny Kemble, Madame de la Tour du Pin, and Theresa Pulszky are just a few of the twenty-six entries included in Tinling's 1993 work, With Women's Eyes. Drawing from journals, diaries, and letters home, Tinling collects a diversity of viewpoints which, due to the varied historical epochs and socio-cultural backgrounds of their writers, are "strikingly descriptive and thought-provoking" according to School Library Journal critic Susan H. Woodcock. Woodcock also remarked on the "hardiness and independence of these early travelers to North America," an observation echoed by a Publishers Weekly contributor who described the writers included as primarily "single, motivated by a strong sense of adventure, inquiry, and reform," and for the most part, staunch social activists.

In more recent years, Tinling has expanded her concern from the field of women's history to "a deeper need of society: to recognize the power of love." As she explained: "I am compiling an anthology of the literature of love: love poetry, love letters, classic love stories, journals, and essays. Love goes beyond the relations between a man and a woman to include relations within families, connections to our fellow creatures, love of the earth, and a recognition that all the world is one, and all people need and deserve to be loved."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

American Literature, November, 1978, J. A. Leo Lemay, review of The Correspondence of the Three William Byrds of Westover, Virginia, 1684-1776, pp. 480-481.

American Reference Book Annual, 1987, Catherine R. Loeb, review of Women Remembered: A Guide to Landmarks of Women's History in the United States, pp. 333-334.

Booklist, June 15, 1989, Sandy Whiteley, review of Women into the Unknown: A Sourcebook on Women Explorers and Travelers, p. 1807.

Choice, September, 1978, review of The Correspondence of the Three William Byrds of Westover, Virginia, 1684-1776, p. 941; June, 1989, G. J. Martin, review of Women into the Unknown: A Sourcebook on Women Explorers and Travelers, p. 1729.

Journal of American History, March, 1988, Angela Howard Zophy, review of Women Remembered, p. 1420.

Library Journal, October 1, 1986, James Moffet, review of Women Remembered, p. 88; May 1, 1989, Olga Wise, review of Women into the Unknown, p. 75; June 15, 1993, Jenny Presnell, review of With Women's Eyes: Visitors to the New World, 1775-1918, p. 85.

Publishers Weekly, April 26, 1993, review of With Women's Eyes, p. 67.

School Library Journal, September, 1993, Susan H. Woodcock, review of With Women's Eyes, p. 264.

Women's History Review, spring, 2001, Hsu-Ming Teo, review of With Women's Eyes, p. 159.