Esmeralda: Or Every Little Bit Helps (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Esmeralda: Or Every Little Bit Helps
As it...)
Excerpt from Esmeralda: Or Every Little Bit Helps
As it is, she is avowedly reducing; which fact disarms comment. Still, ideas come to her rather slowly, and I might almost say visibly. As this idea formulated she tapped the arm of her chair slowly, the magnificent Morton diamond showing to great advantage on her well-cared-f or hand. At length she spoke.
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Nina Wilcox was born on November 28, 1885 in New Haven, Connecticut, United States, the daughter of Marrion Wilcox, an assistant professor of English at Yale who later followed an erratic career as an editor and author, and of Eleanor Patricia Sanchez. It was a family of wealth and high social position. Her father's family was descended from John Wilcox, a signer of the Hartford Charter. Her maternal grandfather was a Spanish count who owned a plantation in Puerto Rico. But both family fortunes declined rapidly during her childhood, and her immediate family descended from wealth to shabby gentility, with some periods of near poverty. Unfortunately, Wilcox's father had little talent for making money or holding a steady job.
Education
Wilcox was educated at home, partly by a governess but mainly by reading in her father's extensive library.
Career
When her father went to South America for an unsuccessful exploration expedition, Nina Wilcox was forced to take a job as a milliner to support her mother and younger sister. Although the job was kept a secret so the family's social standing would not be jeopardized, Wilcox took such pride in her earning power that she gave up the job with great reluctance after her father's return.
Wilcox's career as a professional writer began in 1907 with the acceptance of a short story by Ainslee's magazine. From this time on, she had continuing success as a popular author. In her early career Nina Putnam wrote serious romances, but late in 1915 she turned to high comedy and in 1917 to colloquial humor, introducing her most popular character, Marie La Tour, a movie actress given to slang and humorous mishaps. Her first Marie La Tour story was also her first story to be accepted by the Saturday Evening Post, in which she then published regularly for two decades.
By 1930 she could state that of approximately 950 manuscripts she had written for publication, all but two had been published, bringing her a total of nearly $1 million. Putnam published twenty-two books over a period of thirty-two years. Her works include historical romances, a play about religion, children's books, comic novels, and collections of colloquial humor about husbands and dieting.
Putnam also wrote more than 1, 000 short stories and many movie scenarios. Among the twelve of her short stories that were made into movies are "Sitting Pretty" (1933) and "A Lady's Profession" (1933). From 1928 to 1938 she wrote a humorous syndicated column, "I and George, " for the North American Newspaper Alliance.
Her most publicized effort came in 1912. Convinced that the women's clothing of the time was both uncomfortable and unhygienic, she designed and wore a wardrobe of loose-fitting, one-piece dresses that slipped over her head, all made of washable fabrics. She also dispensed with a corset and reduced the number of her undergarments from half a dozen to one. For months she received attention in the national press, most of it shocked ridicule.
Although her writing achieved great commercial success, it has never received serious critical attention or acclaim. At the time of her death, none of her books was in print. Putnam died in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she had spent the last years of her life.
Achievements
Nina Wilcox Putnam was a prolific writer of romances, westerns, musical comedies and Gothic horror, the best examples of her works, Sitting Pretty, Slaves of Beauty, Two Weeks With Pay. She wrote more than 500 short stories, around 1000 magazine articles, and several books in addition to regular newspaper columns, serials, comic books and children's literature.
She was also a vocal advocate for Victorian dress reform, decrying the horrors of corsets and experimenting with her own dress designs. Her designs, though, presaged the future of women's clothing.
In spite of her extensive acquaintance with Greenwich Village radicals prior to World War I, Putnam was a lifelong and ardent Republican. Much of her most popular work was written in an effort to strengthen American patriotism.
Views
Putnam was an early advocate of women's rights.
Quotations:
"I had abandoned all the nonsensical clap-trap of dress with which women unconsciously symbolized their bondage, " Nina Wilcox wrote in her autobiography.
Personality
Nina Wilcox was s highly self-reliant person.
Connections
Putnam married four times. On October 5, 1907, she married Robert Faulkner Putnam of the publishing family; they had one son. Her husband died of influenza in 1918. She married Robert J. Sanderson, a businessman, on November 4, 1919; they were subsequently divorced. On September 12, 1931, she married Arthur James Ogle, a Florida real estate man; they were divorced in 1932. Her last marriage, on July 16, 1933, was to Christian Eliot.
