Bess was graduated from Iowa State Teachers College, now the University of Northern Iowa, in Cedar Falls, Iowa, United States, in 1901.
Gallery of Bess Aldrich
1400 R St, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA
Bess received a honorary Doctor of Letters degree in literature from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska, United States, in 1934.
Career
Achievements
Membership
Awards
Nebraska Hall of Fame
1445 K St, Lincoln, NE 68508, USA
In 1973, Bess Streeter Aldrich was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame, the seventh person to be so honored. After her death the name of the street where she lived in Lincoln was changed to Aldrich Road
In 1973, Bess Streeter Aldrich was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame, the seventh person to be so honored. After her death the name of the street where she lived in Lincoln was changed to Aldrich Road
(A love and romance vintage novel set in frontier Iowa: Am...)
A love and romance vintage novel set in frontier Iowa: Amid the rough and tumble world of frontier Iowa, eighteen year old Abbie Mackenzie treasured a secret dream. And while dreams don't always come true, Abbie finds love and laughter in a story that has captivated generations.
(Ella Bishop came to college a healthy, country-bred girl,...)
Ella Bishop came to college a healthy, country-bred girl, alive to every fresh sensation, with an infinite capacity for work, love, and understanding. Her abundant energy and devotion to learning made her a superior student, then a gifted teacher. But her smile concealed more than one youthful tragedy.
Bess Aldrich was an American writer. She was an author of numerous novels and short stories.
Background
Bess Genevra was born on February 17, 1881, in Cedar Falls, Iowa, United States; the daughter of James Wareham Streeter and Mary Wilson (Anderson) Streeter. She was born into a family that, on both sides, had pioneered in Iowa. Her mother’s family had moved from Frazerburgh, Scotland, to Quebec, to Illinois, and then to northeastern Iowa. Her father’s family had moved steadily westward through the years, settling first in New York, then Illinois, and finally near Cedar Falls, Iowa. When her mother’s family arrived in Cedar Falls, they lived first in a sheep shed with quilts covering the door opening while they built their house.
Bess, the youngest of eight children, was the only one of the children born in town, as her father’s health no longer allowed him to farm.
Education
Aldrich attended public schools in Cedar Falls and was graduated from Iowa State Teachers College, now the University of Northern Iowa, in Cedar Falls, Iowa, United States, in 1901. Bess received a honorary Doctor of Letters degree in literature from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska, United States, in 1934.
Bess taught for five years. In 1904 she met Charles Switzer Aldrich. In three years they got married. They remained in Iowa for two years before jointly, with Bess’s sister Clara and her husband, John Cobb, purchasing the American Exchange Bank in Elmwood, Nebraska, United States.
Aldrich had been writing stories since childhood. She had won a camera at age of 12 for a story and a $5 prize at age of 17. The thrill of seeing her name in print, she said, led her to know she would be a writer. Under the pseudonym Margaret Dean Stevens, she won a larger prize from the Ladies’ Home Journal, in 1911. She used that pseudonym, a combina- tion of her two grandmothers’ names, until 1917. Altogether, Aldrich wrote more than 100 short stories, including “The Woman Who Was Forgotten” (1926), which later formed the basis for her book Miss Bishop (1933) and the film Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941). “The Man Who Caught the Weather” won the O. Henry Award in 1928.
Bess continued to see the short story as her forte until 1924, when an editor challenged her to write a book. Four days after her husband mailed off her first novel, The Rim of the Prairie (1925), he suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage, leaving Bess with four children ranging in age from 4 to 14. Writing was no longer an avocation, but a necessity.
All of Aldrich’s books are set either in her first home area of Iowa or in the area of her subsequent home in southeastern Nebraska. The book most closely associated with Iowa is Song of Years, 1939, in which she used letters, clippings, and diaries belonging to one of the first Cedar Falls families, the Leavitts. For some time, Harvey Leavitt had been sending Aldrich boxes of material, urging her to use what she wanted to write an Iowa book. She also drew on stories she had heard as a child in Cedar Falls when family members or early settlers came to town for supplies and visited with her parents.
Early Iowa stories and life were the background of almost all of her books, though they were often transported in families and in relationships across the Missouri River to Nebraska. At the end of a radio talk about her first book, The Rim of the Prairie, which dealt with early midwestern pioneer life, she asked listeners to send her material that she could use to write another book about pioneers. From the resulting letters, diaries, and clippings that came to her Elmwood post office, she wrote A Lantern in Her Hand, in 1928, which was so popular that it continued to rank third in nationwide sales three years after publication.
Readers often sent Aldrich articles that they hoped she could turn into a book. Her last work, The Lieutenant’s Lady, in 1942, resulted from the loan of an Iowa family’s diary. The book was a tribute to the courageous women who had endured the hardships of wartime separation from the men they loved and to the heroic men who endured the hardships of war. Aldrich maintained the diary format, and she thoroughly researched all of the details, as she did with all of her books.
Aldrich won awards for various short stories and claimed that she never wrote a story that was not published. She had to her credit eleven novels and three compilations of short stories. Her stories were frequently reprinted in Canada and England. Her books were translated into most of the European languages, and some were translated into Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese. Many of her books are still in print.
Aldrich was a Republican and active in many civic and professional associations.
Views
Quotations:
"Regardless of the popular literary trend of the times, write the thing which lies close to your heart. "
"Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart. .. filled it, too, with melody that would last forever. "
"Love is the light that you see by. "
"A person may encircle the globe with mind open only to bodily comfort. Another may live his life on a sixty-foot lot and listen to the voices of the universe. "
"There is no division nor subtraction in the heart-arithmetic of a good mother. There are only addition and multiplication. "
Connections
On September 24, 1907, Bess married Charles Sweetzer Aldrich, who had been the youngest captain in the Spanish-American War and had served in Alaska as United States Commissioner. After their marriage they lived in Tipton, Iowa, and then Elmwood, Nebraska, where he was a banker and lawyer. They had four children, Mary Eleanor Beechner, James Whitson Aldrich, Robert Streeter Aldrich.
The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa
Iowa has been blessed with citizens of strong character who have made invaluable contributions to the state and to the nation. In the 1930s alone, such towering figures as John L. Lewis, Henry A. Wallace, and Herbert Hoover hugely influenced the nation’s affairs.
In 1973, Bess Streeter Aldrich was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame, the seventh person to be so honored. After her death the name of the street where she lived in Lincoln was changed to Aldrich Road.
In 1973, Bess Streeter Aldrich was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame, the seventh person to be so honored. After her death the name of the street where she lived in Lincoln was changed to Aldrich Road.
Iowa Authors Outstanding Contributions to Literature Award,
United States
1949
1949
University of Nebraska Honorary Degree,
United States