On 21 February, 2008, the U.S. Postal Service added the 24th collectible postage stamp to its long-running Literary Arts series of commemorative stamps with their release of the 41-cent First-Class Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings stamp.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Biography
As reported in the USPS Press Release, Marjorie Kinnan was born Aug. 8, 1896, in Washington, D C.
Marjorie Kinnan showed an early interest and talent in the literary arts. When she was six, she began contributing to the children’s page of the Washington Post, a practice she continued for nearly ten years.
In May 1919, Marjorie Kinnan became Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings when she married Charles Rawlings, a classmate and fellow writer on the University of Wisconsin's literary magazine.
In 1928, Marjorie first encountered the people of rural Florida, an encounter that would shape her literary career, when she vacationed with her husband in Florida's scrub country. The area so captured Rawlings that later that same year, she and her husband purchased a farmhouse on more than 70 acres in the town of Cross Creek. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings spent the rest of her days living and writing in her Cross Creek farmhouse.
In September 2006, the Cross Creek farmhouse where Rawlings lived was designated a national historic landmark. Her house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings died of a cerebral hemorrhage in December 1953 at the unfairly young age of 57.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Literary Works
Inspired by the lives and culture of her neighbors in Cross Creek, Marjorie began submitting fictionalized anecdotes to Scribner’s magazine in 1931. The anecdotes were eventually published under the title “Cracker Chidlings: Real Tales from the Florida Interior” in the February 1931 issue of Scribner's.
The popularity of "Cracker Chidlings" led to the publication of Cross Creek (1942) and Cross Creek Cookery (1942). Cross Creek is a personal memoir of Rawlings' life amongst her relatives and neighbors in rural Florida. Its success inspired a sequel of sorts in Cross Creek Cookery, which consists of recipes and anecdotes from rural Florida.
Despite the success of her "Cracker Chidlings" stories and related books, Rawlings most famous literary contribution is unquestionably The Yearling (1938), a book for which she won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize. The novel portrays the trials and tribulations of a girl named Jody Baxter and the fawn she adopted after her father was forced to kill its mother.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Stamp Design
As reported in The USPS USPS Web Site, artwork for the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings stamp was created by Michael J. Deas, an award-winning artist who is known for his many stamp designs including the 1996 James Dean stamp, the 1997 Thornton Wilder stamp, the 2005 Ronald Reagan stamp, and the 2003 Audrey Hepburn stamp.
The foreground of the Rawlings stamp contains a portrait of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings based on an undated photograph. The background of a fawn at a watering hole in the Florida scrub country is a depiction of the fawn in her Pulitzer Prize novel The Yearling.
United States Stamps in the Literary Arts Series
As of 25 June, 2011, there are 27 stamps in the USPS Literary Arts series. With each new collectible postage stamp, the USPS generates recognition for sometimes-overlooked American authors. The current list of Literary Arts stamp subjects can be found below. For those interested in postage stamp collecting, the Scott catalog number is found beside each stamp.
- John Steinbeck (1979) (#1773)
- Edith Wharton (1980) (#1832)
- Nathaniel Hawthorne (1983) (#2047)
- Herman Melville (1984) (#2094)
- T.S. Eliot (1986) (#2239)
- William Faulkner (1987) (#2350)
- Ernest Hemingway (1989) (#2418)
- Marianne Moore (1990) (#2449)
- William Saroyan (1991) (#2538)
- Dorothy Parker (1992) (#2698)
- James Thurber (1994) (#2862)
- Tennessee Williams (1995) (#3002)
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1996) (#3104)
- Thornton Wilder (1997) (#3134)
- Stephen Vincent Benét (1998) (#3221)
- Ayn Rand (1999) (#3308)
- Thomas Wolfe (2000) (#3444)
- Ogden Nash (2002) (#3659)
- Zora Neale Hurston (2003) (#3748)
- James Baldwin (2004) (#3871)
- Robert Penn Warren (2005) (#3904)
- Katherine Anne Porter (2006) (#4030)
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2007) (#4124)
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (2008) (#4223)
- Richard Wright (2009) (#4386)
- Julia de Burgos (2010) (#TBD)
- Mark Twain (2011) (#TBD)
According to the USPS, many authors who merit philatelic recognition have not, and will not, be featured in the Literary Arts series – although they may appear in another series such as Distinguished Americans. To be included in the Literary Arts series, the author's body of work must have withstood the test of time.
