Adrien Stoutenburg

Adrien Stoutenburg (December 1, 1916 – April 14, 1982) was an American poet and a prolific writer of juvenile literature. Her poetry collection ''Heroes, Advise Us'' was the 1964 Lamont Poetry Selection.

Life

Stoutenburg was born in Darfur, Minnesota. Following her father's death in 1918, she was raised by her paternal grandmother in Hanley Falls, Minnesota. She finished high school in Minneapolis, and attended the Minneapolis School of Art from 1936 to 1938.

She then worked as a librarian and in other capacities near Richfield, Minnesota. Includes "Cicada" and "Before We Drown". In 1943, she published her first book of children's fiction, ''The Model Airplane Mystery''. Stoutenburg later wrote, "After publishing in many magazines, I seriously settled down to writing books in 1951. She had published four books of children's fiction by 1956, when she moved to California to become an editor at Parnassus Press, a publisher of children's literature. She held the position at Parnassus Press until 1958. Over her career, Stoutenburg published about forty books of juvenile fiction and non-fiction. Several of the works were co-authored with Laura Nelson Baker, with whom Stoutenburg lived, in Lagunitas, California. Stoutenburg also published under the pseudonyms Barbie Arden, Lace Kendall, and Nelson Minier (the latter jointly with Baker, e.g. ''The Lady in the jungle''). At least five of Stoutenburg's books were Junior Literary Guild selections. Only one of her works, ''American Tall Tales'', is currently in print; upon its publication in 1966, the ''New York Times'' included it on a listing of recommended volumes for children, summarizing it as "Eight tales, tough, sentimental, and bold, about American's folk heroes ...".

Stoutenburg's first volume of poetry, ''Heroes, Advise Us'', was the 1964 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets; each year, this award honored and supported one poet's first published book. Her second collection, ''A Short History of the Fur Trade'', won a California Book Award (silver) for 1969, and was a close competitor for the Pulitzer Prize. Her third collection, ''Greenwich Mean Time'', was published in 1979. James Dickey has written of her poetry, "If I were to characterize the tone of voice, I would call it that of sensitive outrage, quivering, powerful, and delicate. Delicate: ''therefore'' powerful..."

Stoutenburg died of cancer in 1982 in Santa Barbara, California. At Stoutenburg's request, David R. Slavitt subsequently edited and published a selection of her poetry. The volume, ''Land of Superior Mirages'', includes a number of poems that had been unpublished at her death. In his review, Robert von Hallberg wrote, "Adrien Stoutenburg's poems deserve much more attention than they have received." Some of Stoutenburg's papers, and also those of Laura Nelson Baker, are archived at the University of Minnesota Children's Literature Research Collection. Papers relating to Stoutenburg's career as a poet are housed at The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

Stoutenburg's poems were selected for nine volumes of the annual ''Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards'', and have been included in several more recent anthologies. One common selection is her poem "Cicada", originally published in 1957 in ''The New Yorker''.

Works

Poetry collections

*1964 "The Things That Are". Reilly & Lee, (Chicago). (Illustrated by Robert Lostutter)
*1964 ''Heroes, Advise Us''. Scribner (New York, NY).
*1969 ''A Short History of the Fur Trade''. Houghton (Boston, MA).
*1979 ''Greenwich Mean Time''. University of Utah Press (Salt Lake City, UT). .
*1986 ''Land of Superior Mirages: New and Selected Poems''. David R. Slavitt, editor; James Dickey, introduction. Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD). .

Young-adult fiction

*1954 ''The Silver Trap''
*1958 ''Honeymoon''
*1959 ''Four on the Road''
*1960 ''Good Bye, Cinderella'' (Westminster)
*1964 ''Walk Into the Wind''
*1971 ''Out There'' ("The first major novel of ecological nightmare", from the cover)

Children's fiction and poetry

*1943 ''The Model Airplane Mystery'' (Doubleday Doran)
*1951 ''Timber Line Treasure'' (Westminster)
*1955 ''Stranger on the Bay'' (Westminster)
*1956 ''River Duel'' (Westminster)
*1957 ''In This Corner'' (Westminster)
*1957 ''Snowshoe Thompson'' (with Laura Baker Nelson; illustrated by Victor De Pauw) (Scribner)
*1961 ''The Blue-Eyed Convertible'' (Westminster)
*1961 (Lace Kendall, pseud.; illustrated by Sam Savitt)
*1962 ''Window on the Sea'' (Westminster)
*1962 (Lace Kendall, pseud.; illustrated by Douglas Howland)
*1963 ''A Time For Dreaming'' (Westminster)
*1963 ''The Mud Ponies: Based on a Pawnee Indian Myth'' (Lace Kendall, pseud.; illustrated by Eugene Fern) (Coward-McCann, New York)
*1964 ''The Things That Are'' (poetry; illustrated by Robert Lostutter)
*1965 ''Rain Boat'' (Lace Kendall, pseud.; John Kaufmann, illustrator; Coward-McCann). Stoutenburg called it "One of my favorite books".
*1966 ''American Tall Tales'' ( Richard M. Powers, illustrator) (Puffin, 1976; ).
*1966 ''The Crocodile's Mouth: Folk-song Stories'' (Glen Rounds, illustrator) (Viking)
*1968 ''American Tall-Tale Animals'' (Glen Rounds, illustrator; Viking)
*1969 ''Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum: Friendly and Funny Giants'' (Rocco Negri, illustrator) (Viking, 1969; )
*1971 ''Haran's Journey'' (Laszlo Kubinyi, illustrator; Dial)
*1971 ''A Cat Is'' (poetry; photographs by Sy Katzoff) (Franklin Watts, New York; )
*1972 ''The Giant Who Sucked His Thumb'' (illustrated by Shyam Varma) (Deutsch, London)
*1978 ''Where To Now, Blue?'' (Four Winds Press; )

Non-fiction

*1958 ''Wild Animals of the Far West'' (Ruth Robbins, illustrator; Parnassus Press)
*1958 ''Wild Treasure, The Story of David Douglas'' (with Laura Nelson Baker)
*1959 ''Scannon: Dog with Lewis and Clark'' (with Laura Nelson Baker)
*1960 (under the pseudonym Lace Kendall)
*1961 ''Beloved Botanist: The Story of Carl Linnaeus'' (with Laura Nelson Baker)
*1961 (under the pseudonym Nelson Minier)
*1963 ''Dear, Dear Livy: The Story of Mark Twain's Wife'' (with Laura Nelson Baker)
*1963 (under the pseudonym Lace Kendall)
*1965 ''Explorer of the Unconscious: Sigmund Freud''
*1966 (under the pseudonym Lace Kendall)
*1967 ''A Vanishing Thunder: Extinct and Threatened American Birds''
*1968 ''Animals at Bay: Rare and Rescued American Wildlife''
*1968 (under the pseudonym Lace Kendall)
*1968 ''Listen, America: A Life of Walt Whitman'' (with Laura Nelson Baker; Scribner's)
*1971

References

External links

* Biography of Stoutenburg, and links to some of her poems and other writings.
*
* 1943–1986

Laura Nelson Baker
at LC Authorities, with 27 records 1943–1971 (including 2 "from old catalog")
* – 8 works by Stoutenburg using the pseudonym

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stoutenburg, Adrien
1916 births
1982 deaths
20th-century American poets
American children's writers
American women poets
People from Watonwan County, Minnesota
Writers from Minnesota
American women children's writers
Poets from Minnesota
20th-century American women writers