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Caroline Pafford Miller

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Vorlage:Infobox writer Caroline Pafford Miller (August 26, 1903 – July 12, 1992) was an American novelist. With only a high school education, she went about gathering the folktales, stories, and archaic dialects of the rural communities she visited in the late 1920s and early 1930s, weaving them into an historical fiction she wrote on her kitchen table. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1934 for her first novel, Lamb in His Bosom, about her home state of Georgia. Her success as the first Georgian winner of the fiction prize inspired Macmillan Publishers to seek out more southern writers, resulting in the discovery of Margaret Mitchell, whose first novel, Gone with the Wind, also won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937.

Early years and education

Caroline Pafford was born on August 26, 1903, in Waycross, Georgia, to Elias Pafford and Levy Zan (Hall) Pafford.[1] She was the youngest of seven children.[2] Her father was a Methodist minister and schoolteacher, who died while she was in middle school.[1] Her mother died shortly after that, during Caroline's junior year of high school. During the remaining years of school, she was raised by her older sisters.[2]

In her high school years, Caroline expressed an interest in writing and in the performing arts. She never attended college. After graduating from high school she married William D. Miller, who was her English professor, and moved to Baxley, Georgia, in the late 1920s, where her husband ultimately became superintendent of schools in the Baxley area.[1] William Miller introduced Caroline to classical literature, and she would later say that "he was my college".[2] The couple had three sons, two of whom were twins. During her early years of marriage, while raising her children and performing her domestic duties, Miller continued writing short stories, an activity first begun in high school. The stories were well received, and the small amounts she received supplemented the family income.[1]

First novel and Pulitzer Prize

Miller gathered much of the material for Lamb in his Bosom while she was buying chickens and eggs tens of miles in the backwoods.[3] Her local research and genealogy was written down in a notebook while Miller traveled throughout the south Georgia countryside.[1] She recorded folktales and family oral histories, as well as idiomatic expressions which would eventually color the text of her novel.[4] Her initial work was done when "returning to Baxley, she would go to Barnes Drugstore, order a Coca-Cola, and write down the stories she had heard on the day’s trip",[5] then she would slowly flesh out her novel in the quiet hours of the evening on the kitchen table.[1][2][3] While stories from the backwoods became part of the fabric of her novel, Miller also drew upon the inspiring tales of the pioneer women in her own family history.[3]

Upon completion of the novel, Miller began looking for a publisher. During this search, she met former Pulitzer Prize winner Julia Peterkin, who read Miller's manuscript and forwarded her name (and manuscript) to her own agent. Lamb in His Bosom was subsequently published by Harper in 1933.[4]

Lamb in His Bosom is a story about the struggles of poor white pioneers, in the wiregrass region of nineteenth-century southern Georgia.[1] Upon publication, literary critics embraced the work, describing it as "regional historical realism".[1][3] New York Times' critic Louis Kroenenberger said the novel "has a wonderful freshness about it; not simply the freshness of a new writer, but the freshness of a new world. It all seems to have happened far away and long ago, yet Mrs. Miller has caught it roundly here and made it in its small way imperishable".[3] It has been described as "one of the most critically acclaimed first novels of the Southern Renaissance period".[2]

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded to her at Columbia University on May 7, 1934. Miller told the audience that "she felt like Cinderella and that the success of her book seemed like a fairy tale".[2] Upon her return to Baxley, she was greeted by a crowd of 2,500 and a marching band, which escorted her back to her home.[2] Margaret Mitchell wrote to Miller, saying: "Your book is undoubtedly the greatest that ever came out of the South about Southern people, and it is my favorite book".[6] Within a few years, Mitchell would win her own Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her first novel, Gone with the Wind.[7]

In 1935, Miller was also honored with a French literary award, the Prix Femina Americain.[8]

Author Finis Farr said that after Miller's novel won the Pulitzer, Macmillan Publishers sent editor Harold S. Latham south, on a scouting trip for more southern authors. He famously found Margaret Mitchell and subsequently published Gone with the Wind.[6][7]

Divorce and second marriage

The newfound celebrity, that both complimented and burdened the new Pulitzer Prize winner, proving stressful for the rural Georgia school superintendent and his wife. The obligations and attention imposed upon Caroline were incompatible with the quite, simply, existence that she and William had enjoyed prior to her fame. In 1936, the couple divorced. Caroline remarried one year later to Clyde H. Ray Jr., an antique dealer and florist. The couple moved to Waynesville, North Carolina, where Caroline helped out in the family business while continuing to write short stories and articles for newspapers and magazines, such as Pictorial Review and Ladies Home Journal.[1][8] They had one daughter and a son.[3]

Later years

In 1944, Miller finished her second novel, Lebanon, which garnered mixed reviews from the critics. Although constructed along the lines of her earlier work, set in rural Georgia, the new novel had a romantic storyline which was criticized as being awkward and unrealistic.[1]

After her second husband died, Miller moved to a remote mountain home. It was described as "so remote that visitors had to drive through a cow pasture taking care to close a maze of gates behind them".[2] In the decades that followed, Miller continued to write, completing several manuscripts. But she never sought to publish them. For the most part, she lived a quiet, private, life in her mountain home in western North Carolina.[1][2]

Death and legacy

Historical marker in Baxley, Appling County, Georgia

Miller died on July 12, 1992, in Waynesville, North Carolina, at the age of 88. She is buried in Green Hill Cemetery.[6] She was survived by her daughter, and three of her four sons.[6] Her first novel regained popularity a year after her death when Peachtree Publishers (Atlanta) reprinted Lamb in His Bosom with a new afterword from historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. By Miller's own definition, she had achieved the greatest award given a novelist: "the knowledge that after he dies he will leave the best part of himself behind".[1]

Miller was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.[3] In 1991 the city of Baxley honored her with Caroline Miller Day.[3]

Works

References

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See also

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  1. a b c d e f g h i j k l Vorlage:Citeweb
  2. a b c d e f g h i Vorlage:Citeweb
  3. a b c d e f g h Vorlage:Citeweb
  4. a b Vorlage:Citeweb
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  6. a b c d Vorlage:Citeweb
  7. a b Vorlage:Citeweb
  8. a b Joseph M. Flora, Amber Vogel: Southern Writers: A New Biographical Dictionary. LSU Press, 1980, ISBN 978-0-8071-0390-6, S. 306 (google.com).