Edith Stevenson Wright, herself a successful portrait painter, played such a dominant role in her daughter's life that Dare was never able to find her way into the adult world. But there was a dark side to the story: a brother lost in childhood, ill-fated marriage plans, a complicated, controlling mother.
Blond, beautiful Wright had begun her career as an actress and model and then turned to fashion photography before stumbling upon her role as bestselling author. Over the next five years, Nathan pieced together a glamorous life. Nathan found Dare Wright living out her last days in a decrepit public hospital in Queens, New York. When the cover image inexplicably came to journalist Jean Nathan one afternoon, she went in search of the book-and ultimately its author. With its pink-and-white-checked cover and photographs featuring a wide-eyed doll, it captured the imaginations of young girls and made the author, Dare Wright, a household name.Ĭlose to forty years after its publication, the book was out of print but not forgotten. In 1957, a children's book called The Lonely Doll was published. If princesses could escape punishing circumstances, perhaps Dare could, too.Ī glamorous, haunted life unfolds in the mesmerizing biography of the woman behind a classic children's book If princesses could be put to sleep and awaken unharmed, perhaps fathers and brothers could also. But the mechanics of fairy tales carried a message, too. The first two she purchased were a collection of Grimm's fairy tales and a picture book called The Lovely Garden, the story of the much-beloved Princess Yolande who lives on the Island of Can-be-done, whose "sweet smile seemed to say: 'What am I here for if it is not to make others happier?'" The book's message was reminiscent of her mother's inscriptions on the backs of her portraits-"To my Good and Precious Daughter"-directives on how to act and so meet the conditions of Edie's love. If Dare's first dolls were improvisational, homemade, the books Edie bought Dare when she was feeling flush were the real thing.
There, she learned to find comfort and companionship in her books and her dolls, and to fire up her imagination. Mostly, when Edie had to be out in the world, Dare was left at home alone.
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