“A paragon of industriousness, and wildly inventive, Edie invited her daughter’s participation in creating this new private world,” wrote Nathan.

She was in almost complete isolation with Edie during the ages of six to nine, encouraging an understanding of their own private universe populated by lots of make-believe. But it was during this time that Wright’s perhaps unusually close relationship with her mother began to take hold. According to Jean Nathan, Wright lived in a “state of constant upheaval, with her caregivers changing even more frequently than her surroundings.” Since her father and brother had left her life so early on in her childhood, she was often unsure growing up whether they were real or she had imagined them.Įdie, a portrait painter, began receiving commissions for local lawyers, judges, and politicians, and worked consistently as a painter throughout Wright’s childhood. The family separated when she was three, with Ivan taking Blaine to live in New York and Edie eventually settling with Dare in Cleveland, Ohio. Her parents’ marriage was already troubled by this time, and she was caught in the crossfire from birth. Wright was born Canadian in Vaughn, Ontario on Decemto Ivan Wright, Edith “Edie” Stevenson, and older brother Blaine. Little Edie and Big Edie: Growing Up With Mommie Dearest And the biographer’s claim that this was the first comprehensive look into Wright’s life was not unfounded - fiercely private, she gave very few interviews over the course of her career, and next to nothing was publicly known about her later years and death until The Secret Life’s publication in 2004. But something about this biography’s promise to tell the story, for the first time in full, of the author of a once-famed children’s book from the 1950s who fell out of the limelight in later life spoke to me. I had, at this point, never heard of Dare Wright or The Lonely Doll, named “ the creepiest children’s book” of all-time by The New Yorker in 2017. It was at such a store that, thanks to their wide and eclectic range of often offbeat literary biographies, I came across Jean Nathan’s The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright. I try to do my part to keep my passion for books alive through stores like these, as it’s there that you can often unearth valuable, out-of-print gems that you would unlikely find anywhere else. Bookshops like these have become a precious rarity in the digital age and especially with the continued decline of brick-and-mortar retail.

A few months back, I was browsing the shelves of my favorite used bookstore.

The loneliest doll