When writers become famous, their celebrity often leads to a one-dimensional perception of their talent by readers, students of literature, and the general public. As

with many famous figures, the authors become known for what is only a small slice of their work and their lives. This phenomenon has been magnified over recent years as marketing and branding concepts grow increasingly intertwined with publishing and the arts. Today, gaining the attention of a loyal audience or achieving first publication forces many writers to present themselves as producers of one genre or better yet, masters of a sub-genre. How many creative people, however, are chained to one genre, or even to one artistic medium?

The craft of creating a story and ordering language more often leads to diverse work, and of this diverse work the writer may view some pieces purely as diversion and some as essential to his or her career. Dabbling in a variety of genres may for some be a vacation of sorts from their usual writing habits. In other cases, the author desires a stretching experience or a strengthening exercise, laboring deliberately in an unfamiliar style to improve his routine work. Producing gifts for family members or friends has long been another motivator for authors to stray outside familiar writing modes. Whatever their motivation, authors who have chosen to use their hidden talents as well as their writing skills that have brought them notoriety provide literature lovers with a fascinating subject of study.

One of the more common instances in which authors work outside their associated genre is that of adult authors creating children’s books. This has long been a practice, and adult authors—and many celebrities—have only continued to show strong interest

in writing for children or teens. The publishing world has cited a significant increase in books written by famous adult novelists and intended for juvenile or teen readers. While each writer has his or her own personal reason for pursuing the children’s market, some in the industry, such as Publisher’s Weekly writer Judith Rosen and Guardian culture writer Jasper Rees, feel that the success of several notable children’s series over the past decade has perpetuated this trend. What could be more appealing to writers than to know that young and old readers alike may find joy in their work? In addition, authors who historically wrote for adults are often motivated by personal or familial reasons to write for younger audiences. A number of the writers mentioned here wrote books or stories for a specific child, compositions that were subsequently published for the reading public.

Exploring these somewhat secret sides of famous writers is too large a topic to cover exhaustively in a single article, but the appetite may be whet with this whirlwind tour of a selection of well-known authors. Each of these writers possessed multiple talents or published outside of his or her associated genre. Though a sampling, the group included here represents a broad range of eras and genres.

Beginning chronologically with a famous early American writer, one may be surprised to learn that a man known for his sometimes bleak novels and stories about Puritan communities wrote two children’s books. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) wrote A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls in 1852 and then produced Tanglewood Tales a year later. In the Wonder Book, Hawthorne rewrote six classics of mythology for young readers. He also included a preface and a conclusion for each myth to help children

By Stacey Brownlie

ThePrivate Side of Public Figures Hidden talents of famous writers

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understand the stories. It is intriguing to note Hawthorne’s remarks in the opening pages, that his writing of this book was “one of the most agreeable, of a literary kind, which [he] ever undertook” and that he did not think that it was “necessary to write downward, in order to meet the comprehension of children.” He felt that children had more capacity to understand literature than people perceived and that it was “the artificial and complex” that confused them rather than high concepts or lofty themes. Because of the success of A Wonder Book, Hawthorne followed this with Tanglewood Tales, a second collection based on the same format: stories derived from mythology and revised for children.

Another early American author and a friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville (1819-1891), famous today for novels of the sea and struggle, also harbored a talent for writing poetry. A sometimes misunderstood author—and a forgotten one at the time of his death—Melville put aside fiction writing in the late 1850s and wrote poetry, self-publishing four books of poetry in this later

period. Much of this work concentrated on the Civil War. The titles of Melville’s four poetry collections are Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War: Civil War Poems (1866); Clarel: A Poem and a Pilgrimage (1876); John Marr and Other Sailors (1888); and Timoleon (1891). Melville wrote the title piece for his second poetry book in response to his Holy Land visit in 1856 and 1857. The discovery of the manuscript for the critically praised novella Billy Budd, Sailor after Melville’s death hints that Melville’s poetic compositions eventually led him to return one last time to prose.

Melville was certainly not the only famous novelist to publish poetry. In fact, there was a group of notable female novelists who also published a shared poetry collection, a book made more obscure because it was written under male pen names and only sold two copies. This volume of poetry was the product of the Brontë sisters—Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1848), and Anne (1820-1849). Selected Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell was the first published work for each of the Brontë sisters. Printed in 1846, the volume contains poems that explore both romantic and spiritual themes. Some of the poems also make reference to the imaginary worlds of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal, fantasy places that the

sisters (along with their brother, Branwell) had used in make-believe play. Though the book was not successful at the time of its limited-run printing, it has understandably become a collector’s item. The Brontë sisters of course each followed this first try at publishing with individual and very successful novels. Selected Poems was reprinted in the United States in 1848.

Turning from writers most known for being novelists, one finds in British author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898) a unique and little-known blend of talent. Dodgson is the real name of famous children’s author Lewis Carroll. Dodgson’s Alice in Wonderland: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a classic enjoyed by adults and children alike. Alice in Wonderland is but one of many books written by Dodgson—titles published under the Carroll pen name for children as well as those produced under his given name for adults. Dodgson’s other works for children were distinguished by his talent for nonsense poems and riddles. His books for adults are surprisingly different—mostly nonfiction titles on topics of mathematics, the subject he taught for many years at Christ’s Church College in Oxford. Dodgson also excelled in photography. He produced thousands of photographs between 1856 and 1880, most of them portraits. A great number of Dodgson’s portrait subjects were children, including Alice Liddell (who inspired Dodgson’s Alice in Wonderland), but he also

Princeton University Library, Morris L. Parrish Collection. Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. Princeton University Library.

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photographed notable adults such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson; William Holman Hunt; and John Ruskin. Beyond being an artist and a writer, Dodgson could also go by the title of inventor. He created several writing-related gadgets as well as some games and a glue substitute. Dodgson was a man of many interests; his writing unified some of them, allowing him to explore the imagination and creativity of children’s minds as well as the logic and precision of math and science.

Though poetry seems an unfamiliar genre for writers like Melville and the Brontë sisters, the form could not be more closely linked to the name Robert Frost (1874-1963). Frost’s name is also one of the few belonging to a poet that the average American recognizes; his most famous pieces have been memorized by countless schoolchildren. Frost departed from his well-known poems of New England for his four children, Lesley, Carol, Irma, and Marjorie. He created bedtime stories, which he told to his children and preserved in one of his notebooks. He gave his children protagonist’s roles in the stories, putting them in situations similar to their real lives with some added touches of fantasy. Though Frost reportedly did not intend to publish the stories, these private compositions became a children’s book titled Stories for Lesley. Roger D. Sell with the University Press of Virginia edited the collection of 18 stories taken from Frost’s personal Derry notebook, which Frost wrote sometime between 1899 and 1906.

William Faulkner (1897-1962), another American author who became a household name, also penned a children’s book. Faulkner’s one composition of children’s fiction, The Wishing Tree, was a birthday gift to his stepdaughter Victoria Franklin in 1927. Faulkner created the entire book, typing and binding it himself. According to the William Faulkner Encyclopedia, Faulkner created a second, longer version of the story for another child, Margaret Brown, and later gave several other copies as Christmas gifts in 1948. In 1964,

Random House formally published Faulkner’s story as a children’s book with illustrations by Don Bolognese. Random House used the original text from the first book created for Victoria. The story was also reprinted in the April 8, 1967, edition of the Saturday Evening Post. The original handmade copy of The Wishing Tree, donated to Southeast Missouri University by collector Louis Daniel Brodsky, is now housed at the university’s Center for Faulkner Studies. Faulkner departed from his novelist reputation in other ways as well. He published several collections of poetry and he also wrote and contributed to television screenplays and film scripts as a more stable way of earning money.

One of the more well-known writers for adults who also penned children’s books is E.B. White (1899-1985). White wrote

Printed with permission of A P Watt Ltd on behalf of Trustees of the C L Dodgson Estate.

Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, is perhaps best known for his classic children's book, Alice in Wonderland. But he also excelled in photography, taking portraits of famous people including George MacDonald (below) and Alfred, Lord Tennyson (left).

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three children’s books, all extremely popular, though Charlotte’s Web (1952) and Stuart Little (1946) are the two long considered to be classics. The Trumpet of the Swan, written decades later than his first two children’s titles, is also a well-loved, if not as well-known, juvenile title. White commented in an interview that he saw little difference between writing for children or writing for adults, citing “a very slight modification of vocabulary” and a change in the writer’s “state of mind.” Stuart Little, White’s first children’s book, was based on stories about a mouse. He had originally shared these stories with his nieces and nephews. White followed Stuart Little with Charlotte’s Web, a book he reportedly referred to as a “hymn to the barn.” Children have now loved the animal characters of this story about a pig for more than 50 years, a tale that gently helps them learn about difficult experiences like death and loss. White was truly a multitalented writer, finding great success in his primary role as an essayist and major contributor to The New Yorker, and who not only composed these popular children’s books but also wrote poetry and drew sketches. White received many awards and honors for his work, culminating with the 1971 National Medal for Literature.

Much less well-known are the two children’s books by a writer who appears in distinct contrast to E.B. White. Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) is known primarily as a poet and secondarily as a novelist, a woman sadly also remembered for her struggle with mental illness and her commission of suicide at only 30 years of age. Plath’s legacy of complex poems and dark themes make it all the more interesting that she also wrote two children’s books: The Bed Book, published in the U.K. by Faber & Faber and first published in the U.S. by Harper & Row (both in 1976), and The It-Doesn’t-Matter Suit, published in the U.S. by St. Martin’s Press in 1996 and in the U.K. in 1997 by Faber & Faber. These titles offer readers a different side of Plath, the happiness and lightness in their tone serving as strict antonyms to her poetry and sole novel, The Bell Jar. The Bed Book is a whimsical story about beds that serve various purposes outside of traditional slumbering. Plath mentions working on The Bed Book story in one of her journal entries. The It-Doesn’t-Matter Suit, published after Plath’s death after the manuscript’s discovery among her papers, focuses on a character named Max Nix and his conspicuous yellow suit. Both of these books are now difficult to find, though used copies are available in limited quantities through online booksellers.

Plath is not the only complex poet to have written in a separate genre. E.E. Cummings (1894-1962), known among other things for eschewing formal capitalization and punctuation in his work, wrote fairy tales as well as plays and also produced art outside the written medium as a painter. Fairy Tales contains four stories Cummings composed for his daughter, Nancy. Originally published

by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1965 with illustrations by John Eaton, Fairy Tales was republished in hardcover by W.W Norton & Company with new illustrations in 2004. There is another juvenile book associated with Cummings titled Little Tree. This book was only published in 1987 and is derived from Cummings’ Christmas poem, “Little Tree.” Cummings’ most well-known play was Him. The play concerns a male character named “him” and a female character named “me,” returning to familiar themes in Cummings’ poetry of the man/woman relationship and love and union in the context of a large, messy world. Cummings also created a travel memoir titled Eimi (Greek for “I am”) following his trip to the Soviet Union in 1931. Like some other artists at the time, Cummings originally had interest in the Communist form of government but quickly changed his mind after experiencing Soviet society firsthand. Cummings’ visual artwork, which he formally exhibited numerous times, was also featured in a book titled CIOPW in 1931. Cummings’ paintings are thought to reflect two major periods of his life: his abstract-, cubist-, and dada-influenced works were primarily created during his younger years, while he migrated to representational pieces in

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the second half of his life. Since Cummings produced well over a thousand paintings and painted consistently throughout his career, one wonders if, to him, visual art and the art of language were equally important pursuits, though his notoriety today is primarily due to his poetry.

Poet Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), a contemporary of E.E. Cummings, was also a prolific and multitalented writer. He is remembered for his plain spoken poems about America, particularly his poems about the city of Chicago, and is almost always included in high school and college American literature textbooks for this reason. Yet he also wrote a biography of Abraham Lincoln that is likely the most exhaustive ever produced, a book that took about 30 years to research and write. This enormous two-volume work was originally supposed to be a juvenile biography, but Sandburg became completely engrossed in his subject, and it evolved into a true labor of love. In addition, Sandburg played the guitar; traveling and performing in public, he played his instrument, sang folk tunes, and recited his poetry. He also composed fairy tales for his children, several of which he published (Rootabaga Stories in 1922, Rootabaga Pigeons in 1923, Rootabaga Country in 1929, and Potato Face in 1930). Two of Sandburg’s poetry collections, Early Moon and Wind Song, were also intended for children. Some of Sandburg’s previously unpublished stories for youth were gathered into another book, More Rootabagas, by George Hendrick in 1993. Sandburg was also a successful journalist who covered World War I, the Chicago race riots, and World War II. A master of many genres, Sandburg was that rare writer who enjoyed the fame and popularity that few authors see during their lifetimes.

Ogden Nash (1902-1971), another 20th Century poet, is most remembered for his humorous verses and silly couplets. Though Nash’s lighter side sometimes failed to bring him serious critical acclaim, he became quite popular with readers and often toured and lectured. Nash did write for the famously particular The New Yorker, however, demonstrating his skill with more literary prose. Nash’s little-known writings outside of his light verse included numerous song lyrics, verses for a television production of Peter and the Wolf, and several poem-stories for children. Nash also wrote screenplays for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and though these were never produced, he did have success in 1943 with a Broadway play, One Touch of Venus. Venturing outside of writing in his middle years, Nash was often a guest on television entertainment shows. The Adventures of Isabel, a picture book just published in 2008, was created from a piece that Nash wrote and named for his daughter. Nash had a signature style of light verse that included invented words, puns, irregular line lengths, and unexpected rhymes.

The final author in this tour of famous writers’ hidden talents is one of the most recognizable in modern culture. For many, it would not be difficult to name the character most associated with writer Ian Fleming (1908-1964). The fictional James Bond and his creator were and are nearly inseparable in the 007 legend. Fleming was responsible for another famous character, however. This character was not a human; it was an automobile. Fleming’s children’s story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car, originally created for his son Caspar, was published in 1964. The popular tale was subsequently made into a film in 1968 and, more recently, was adapted into a London stage play in 2002 and a Broadway musical in 2005. Just as with his Bond novels, Fleming’s children’s story was successful during his lifetime and continues to be well-loved today.

Most writers toil in solitude. Many never become known outside of a small circle, whether it be geographic or relational. A few writers become published authors and with this exposure—in rare cases—comes long-lasting fame. Over time, this fame obscures the multi-faceted work of notable authors. After these writers die, their notoriety may become even narrower. The general public sometimes remembers them for just that one book—perhaps even just that one poem, character, or sentence.

Yet despite this narrowing effect, many of the creations engendered by the hidden talents of writers have endured in surprising ways. They have become favorite family movies, such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming. They have become favorite games, like Scrabble, originally thought up by Lewis Carroll, to be played on lazy Sunday afternoons. Although they are no longer, or perhaps never were, publicly associated with their famous creators, they are now famous in their own right. Children’s books like Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web have overshadowed the author’s primary work and survived the passage of time by rebirth on television and in film. Many people, if asked, would not recognize the name E.B. White in any other context but as the author of these beloved classics.

The authors who created these works most likely considered them to be labors of love for family and friends or simple hobbies. For example, Lewis Carroll said of his photography, “It is my one recreation and I think it should be done well.” They probably did not realize that these stories, games, and images would become, in many cases, as much a lasting part of our culture as the novels, essays, and poems they considered to be their primary work. The fact some ‘secret’ talents have become successful is a testament to the genius of their creators, a genius which would not allow itself to be limited by the constraints of one creative outlet.

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