Johnston, Annie Fellows

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JOHNSTON, Annie Fellows

Born 15 May 1863, Evansville, Indiana; died 5 October 1931, Pewee Valley, Kentucky

Daughter of Albion and Mary Erskine Fellows; married William L. Johnston, 1888; children: three

Annie Fellows Johnston grew up on a farm outside Evansville, Indiana. Although her father, a Methodist minister, died when she was only two, Johnston was influenced by him, through his theological books, and by her mother, who had strong ideas about the importance of education for women. Johnston attended public schools in Evansville and the University of Iowa (for a year). After teaching for several years and working for a time as a private secretary, she married her cousin, a widower. After his death in 1892, Johnston turned to writing as a career. Eventually, she and her three stepchildren settled in Pewee Valley, Kentucky, which Johnston fictionalized as Lloydsboro Valley in her popular Little Colonel series. In 1899 Johnston's stepdaughter Rena died; two years later Johnston moved to Arizona for her stepson John's health, and then on to Texas, where they lived until his death in 1910.

As a children's author, Johnston was both prolific, with over 40 volumes, and popular—reportedly, at her death her books had sold over 1 million copies. Some readers today are still familiar with Johnston's 13-volume Little Colonel series, which began with the publication of The Little Colonel (1896). Unlike many authors of series books, Johnston allows her characters to mature. For example, we see Miss Lloyd Sherman first as a five-year-old, impetuous and stubborn, and last as a young married woman, lovely and vivacious. Many people know Johnston's most famous character only through David Butler's 1935 Fox film, The Little Colonel, starring Shirley Temple as Lloyd and Lionel Barrymore as old Colonel Lloyd. The story of the conflict of pretty, spunky Lloyd with her crusty old grandfather, who severed relations with his only daughter, Elizabeth, when she eloped with a Yankee, was a perfect vehicle for Temple's talents.

Johnston's work was commercially successful, and her publisher clearly took advantage of the popularity of the Little Colonel books. For example, in 1909 the Page Company issued The Little Colonel's Good Times Book, with blank pages for children to record their "good times," as Betty Lewis did in The Little Colonel's House Party (1900). Many of the legends and tales in Johnston's books were subsequently published as separate volumes, such as The Legend of the Bleeding Heart (1907) and The Road of the Loving Heart (1922), both of which first appeared in The Little Colonel's House Party.

Johnston's works have the flaws of many children's books of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The characters are idealized; the conflicts, resolved too easily; the themes, simplistic and naive. The typical world of Johnston's fiction is one of wealth and aristocracy, in which separation of the races and the inferiority of blacks are assumed. But, interestingly, it is a world in which women are not automatically relegated to the life of wife and mother or to unfulfilled spinsterhood. Especially through the experiences of Lloyd Sherman and her friends, Johnston emphasizes the importance for women of education in academic subjects; likewise, she allows her young women the option of independence, through characters such as unmarried Joyce Ware, pursuing her career as a commercial artist in an apartment in New York.

A strong moral code underlies every work by Johnston. Through legends and tales, some traditional and others original, she cleverly makes points her young characters are never allowed to miss. Readers of an earlier, simpler day took these lessons to heart and were inspired to model their lives after Lloyd, Betty, Joyce, and other characters; contemporary readers in our complex age often find Johnston's stories more didactic than inspiring or entertaining. These tales, are nonetheless, still popular today with Johnston's original The Little Colonel reissued once again in 1998.

Other Works:

Big Brother (1894). Joel: A Boy of Galilee (1895). The Little Colonel's Holiday (1901). The Little Colonel's Hero (1902). The Little Colonel at Boarding School (1903). The Little Colonel in Arizona (1904). The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation (1905). The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor (1906). The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding (1907). The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware (1908). Mary Ware in Texas (1910). Mary Ware's Promised Land (1912). Miss Santa Claus of the Pullman (1913). Georgina of the Rainbows (1916). It Was the Road to Jericho (1919). The Land of the Little Colonel: Reminiscence and Autobiography (1929).

Bibliography:

Browne, R. B., et al., eds., Challenges in American Culture (1970). Duin, J. Waiting for True Love: And Other Tales of Purity, Patience, and Faithfulness (1998). McGuire, S. L.,The Little Colonel: A Phenomenon in Popular Literary Culture (1991).

Reference works:

Arizona in Literature: A Collection of the Best Writings of Arizona Authors from Early Spanish Days to the Present Time (1971). DAB. Indiana Authors and Their Books, 1816-1916 (1949). Junior Book of Authors (1934). NAW (1971). NCAB. Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995). TCA.