Literary Figures - Women's Biography, U.S. Authors - 20th Century - Literary Biography, American Women - Literary Biography

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Name: Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Author: Dorothy Herrmann
ISBN: 9780395561140

by Dorothy Herrmann

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Overview

Anne Morrow Lindbergh has led a storybook life, in both its achievements and its tragedies. The daughter of a banker and diplomat, the wife of Charles Lindbergh, and a pioneer aviatrix, she also wrote one of the most beloved works of our century, A Gift from the Sea. This compelling biography explores the career of this remarkable woman, beginning with her sheltered and privileged upbringing and her marriage to the foremost hero of her generation and continuing on to the trauma of their baby's kidnapping, the ensuing years of self-imposed exile, the bitter controversy concerning Lindbergh's political isolationism, and the postwar years, which saw the publication of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's most enduring works. Dorothy Herrmann offers a sensitive, probing life that is brimful with prominent figures of the century: Amelia Earhart, Franklin Roosevelt, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Frida Kahlo, Joseph Kennedy, Hermann Goring, Harold Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West, and Charles Lindbergh, the brilliant, troubled young man who was catapulted to fame in 1927 by his solo flight across the Atlantic. Throughout we watch Anne Morrow Lindbergh's struggle to find her own identity and then to balance the demands of being a wife, a mother, and an artist amid the contending pressures of family and fame. In depicting the excitement, tragedy, and ultimate triumph of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, this biography adds a significant new chapter to the history of women in the twentieth century.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The eventful life of Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-) is here the subject of a lively, well-written but ultimately disappointing biography. Relying heavily upon her subject's five published volumes of diaries and letters, Herrmann ( S. J. Perelman ) focuses on Anne Morrow's marriage to hero aviator Charles Lindbergh, which took place in 1929--two years after he flew the first successful nonstop flight across the Atlantic. Although they had a strong, loving relationship, their lives were traumatized and forever changed: by the kidnapping and murder of the first of their six children, who was named after his father, in 1932; and later, during WW II, when they were ostracized by friends and criticized nationally for Charles Lindbergh's isolationist and anti-Semitic views. Despite Anne Lindbergh's considerable achievements (she published 13 books including the bestselling Gift from the Sea ), Herrmann postulates that her devotion to her husband--including her support of his fascist sympathies--cost her her own identity. An interesting book, it fails, however, to provide sufficient analysis of or insight into Anne Lindbergh's writing or life. Herrmann gives the years following Lindbergh's husband's death in 1974 only cursory attention. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (Nov.)

Booknews

This biography tells of Lindbergh's life, work, and interactions with important people, conveying her struggle (successful) to find her own identity and then to balance the demands of being a wife, mother, artist, and famous person. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Kirkus Reviews

Like Herrmann's S.J. Perelman (1986): a vigorous, intelligent portrait of a complex personality. Public events in the lives of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh—lives lived against the grain of Main Street adulation—still bristle in the memories of a pre-WW II generation: the famous 1927 flight; the kidnapping of the couple's baby and the subsequent trial; Charles's pro-German propagandizing (with Anne's published support) while Hitler was on the march. Herrmann probes the intense, obsessive marriage and, in particular, the shy, introspective Anne's sacred certainty that by offering absolute support to her husband, she would secure her own self. From a wealthy, frenetically active family, Anne was oddly attracted to ill-educated, "boyish" hero Charles, who liked practical jokes and the poems of Robert Service. (Herrmann quotes their daughter Reeve: "In large part it was a physical relationship....") During the honeymoon months, they flew together, the quirky early machines handled with Charles's technical brilliance, the flights beautifully chronicled by Anne. Herrmann details the terrible events of their first baby's kidnapping and the famous trial: "essentially [the Lindberghs] would remain victims for the rest of their lives." The author speculates, also, that a victim's rage, horror, and helplessness can lead to a "messianic sense of mission" when a global event touches these deadly depths. The hero became a pariah when his involvement in the noninterventionist movement encompassed Nazi sympathies and anti-Semitism. Privately, Anne protested; publicly, she supported her husband. Anne herself would return to public favor in the 1950's with her Gift From theSea, in which she urged "islands" of soul-restoration for women worn by daily cares. (Here, Herrmann offers a dead-center critique of Anne's style.) A convincing portrait of a gentle woman with the inner fiber of piano wire, absolutely committed to a life within a love. A sound work—fascinating and essential. (Sixteen-page b&w photo insert.)