Shelby Museum - Authors

Shelby Ohio Authors

DAWN POWELL



1927


The Daily Globe – April 23, 1927 “MRS. JOSEPH GOUSHA Nee Dawn Powell Author of Play Scheduled for Broadway Presentation.
'Woman at Four O'clock,' a play written by Dawn Powell, former Shelby girl, has just been announced for production on Broadway this fall. The play has been acquired by the 'New Playwrights' Theater and is scheduled for presentation next season, according to the New York World. Mrs. Joseph Gorsha, who formerly was Miss Powell, is now busy writing the play which will certainly interest all the women and men as well.

Mrs. Gorsha, who is remembered by many of our people, has been very successful as an author and writer in New York, and each month her articles appear in current magazines. 'Rhinestone Heels' will appear in College Humor next week."




'Woman at Four O'clock' was the first of four major plays that Powell wrote during her career. The others: 'Big Night', 'Jig Saw', and 'Walking Down Broadway' will be covered later.




The Daily Globe – May 28, 1927 “MRS. JOSEPH GOUSHA One-time Member of Globe Staff, Occupies Page in June College Humor.
"The June issue of College Humor contains an article concerning Dawn Powell who is fast forging to the front as an author and writer. Mrs. Joseph Gousha, now if you please, you know who she is married to, was at one time a reporter on the Globe staff. This was in the days when she was in Shelby high school and wore her hair hanging in a braid down her back. The magazine also contains a fine picture of her, but the braid is gone, her hair is bobbed and we looked darn close but fail to find the least sign of a double chin. Here is the article:

"Thumbnail: There things we already know about Dawn Powell: That her favorite color is yellow, and that she is slightly dippy about ten cent stores and licorice and Oscar Shaw and pomegranate pushcarts and Brooke Johns. We could have told you but you wouldn't have liked it, so we decided to let her run wild:

'Yes, I write,' she says. 'I used to write in my apartment until I found I was maintaining a salon. The place, from morning to night, was rendezvous for all the fashionable icemen, laundrymen, dressmakers and Wanamaker collectors. It was impossible to work, even though I couldn't help but feel flattered. It isn't every girl who can say, 'I'll send you a check next week' and send a roomful of people into gales of laughter. But you can't be making epigrams all day. I realized that. After my first novel was published (that was Whither) I left the apartment cold and rented a lavishly decorated workroom. A personally autographed picture of Baron Munchausen hung over my typewriter, and just to put the inimitable woman's touch on the place, I could not resist hanging over the door a dear little chewing gum slot machine. All this was within a coconut's throw of Washington Square, and down in these parts the place was cynically known referred to as 'Powell's Folly.' Every morning as faithful as the clock, I would trudge over to the studio, get into my working clothes, stretch out on the army cot and sleep for hours. At two, say, I would wake up, fresh as a daisy, and go out to the Wagon Diner and have a snack (steak, apple dumpling and donuts) or downstairs to the Chintz Shop and have a bite of chintz. Then I would buckle down to a good movie or a vaudeville show.

'This kept up for months, and friends – Charlotte, for instance – said, 'My your studio certainly is agreeing with you. But aren't you putting on a little weight?'

'Time went on. Came spring. One day I noticed that marauders had broken into my little retreat and stolen my typewriter. It was almost too much. It seemed like a divine criticism of my literary work. I wept for days and then one day I raised four dollars and went to a funny store where they had typewriters to rent. I was hesitating between a portable and an importable, when I saw hanging up on the wall a ukulele. It was marked just $4.00. I'm no fool, Mr. Swanson, and I pride myself on my business head. Should I rent a typewriter for one short month, or buy outright – for life, you might say - that handsome musical instrument, all for the same money? I did not hesitate. I bought the ukulele and installed it in my workroom.

'Since then I have worked as hard as ever, but at least I have something for my labors. In no time a t all I had mastered Doowackadoo. Encouraged by this, I was taking up my vocal work again, and in even less time I had learned to play some rather refreshing little limericks and other folk songs that I'd be the last person in the world to repeat. People – Esther, for instance, said to me, 'How well your work agrees with you! But, my dear, aren't you putting on just a little weight?'
"And that is why you see me today respected in the community and at the head of my profession. It isn't everyone who can say as much.”


1928



Original Publication 1928 Brentanos Publishers, N. Y.

The Daily Globe – February 10, 1928
“DAWN POWELL
Former Shelby Girl Completes Novel for Spring Publication.
"Dawn Powell, a former Shelby girl and niece of Mrs. O.M. Steinbrueck of North Broadway has recently completed another novel entitled 'She Walks in Beauty' which is one of the spring publications of Bretano's. The advance sales have been simply phenomenal according to the salesmen on the road who say it is outselling five to one everything else on the Bretano spring book list.

"The author is well known here having many friends who will be glad to hear of this late success. Some of our citizens have read 'The Constant Nymph' which was her recent success.

"From the Gretano's advance catalogue we are given their review of Dawn's late book: Here is a novel that has for its background a small city in the middle west, a setting that has been captured by 'Main Street', and is here illumined by Jules' household, an immense, rambling furnished room house on the wrong side of the railroad tracks- a house whose rooms are occupied by the transient backwash of humanity - a house where two young girls under grandmother Jules' care struggle against an environment that is as colorful and difficult as Sanger's menage in 'The Constant Nymph.'

"There are unforgettable characters moving in and out of the pages and the rooms. There is a love story of compelling tenderness.
" Sinclair Lewis in 'Main Street,' Sherwood Anderson in 'Winesburg, Ohio,' Edgar Lee Masters in 'The Spoon River Anthology,' have given us in different fortms photographic and vivid pictures of middle western life as viewed by men with a discerning eye. Dawn Powell does something more than this, for with a woman's inquisition and subtlety of feeling she somehow creates characters with whom we intimately associate ourselves. Few readers will be able to finish this novel without misty eyes or a catch in the throat occasioned by its authentic sentiment. "



Author Tim Page remarks in his Dawn Powell biography:
" 'She Walks in Beauty' has a scanty story line; it is fundamentally a series of vignettes from the wrong-side-of-the-tracks Ohio boardinghouse, a fusion of the lodging (51 East Main Street, Shelby) run by Grandmother (Julia Ann) Sherman and the table Orpha May (Steinbrueck) used to provide for travelers and railroad men opposite the Shelby Junction depot (121 1/2 North Broadway). In the novel, the boardinghouse is run by a woman named Aunt Jule, who with some slight alterations, is clearly a composite of Powell's industries relatives."1




The Philadelphia Inquirer – March 24, 1928
“Dawn Powell's Engrossing Novel 'She Walks in Beauty'
Reviewed by Helen Lehman
“Hail to another new novelist! - another from the Middle West. This time it is Dawn Powell, a young woman from Ohio, who writes about a little town she calls Birchfield, in the middle of her home State, under the Byronic title, 'She Walks in Beauty' (Brentano's).

“More particularly is this story about the household and the personality of Juliet Marsh Shirley, widow of Judge Shirley, who, because ' - - - all that's best of dark and bright met in her aspect and her eyes' established and persisted in maintaining a boarding house for the flotsam and jetsam of humanity as it flowed and ebbed in the town, becoming a town character known as Aunt Jule, or Jule Shirley, or just Jule (depending on the strata in which she was being discussed), although her children, who had married and held respectable social positions in Columbus, tried hard to make her see the harm of her path to the standing of the family. She was as oblivious to the effect of the town's opinions of her menage on the status of the Shirleys as she was to the opinions themselves.

“Her granddaughters, Linda and Dorrie Shirley, view things each her own way. Beautiful Linda, between seventeen and twenty in the book, is aloof, critical of grandma, desperate, anxious for a 'respectable' environment. Dorrie, plainer of face and figure, between fifteen and eighteen, is more sympathetic. Folks slight her too, but she feels more sorry for those who slight than for herself. Like grandma, she is compassionate; she 'walks in beauty' and writes poetry.

“Other more or less permanent persons of the establishment are the gossipy cripple, Ella Morris; the learned, aged and bedridden Mr. Wickley; the malodorous stableman, Lew Mason, with his bride a generation his junior; besides a number of transient members, troupers and the like.

“These characters are deftly and superbly drawn. In fact, Linda, in the hands of a less gifted writer, would be too difficult to manipulate as done in this book and emerge with human proportions. But Dawn Powell does much with such slight strokes as, 'Later on, Linda thought, after they were married she could tell him she didn't like to be kissed.'

“Aside from characterization, the book is fine. It has form and lucid style. Two or three years the reader spends at Aunt Jule's in Birchfield, Ohio, and he knows the atmosphere not only of the house and the town, but even the surrounding towns. He sees the development of the emotional life of the girls from the beginning to an end not too definite and artistically satisfying.

“Dawn Powell shows leanings toward Willa Cather, particularly the Willa Cather of 'My Antonia.' Temperamentally it seems she could choose no better modern master; and Miss Cather could be no more flattered than by a disciple of such artistry as Dawn Powell in 'She Walks in Beauty' – presumably a first novel.”





The Daily Globe – April 24, 1928
“SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY”
"Review of Dawn Powell's Latest Book From Houston Chronicle.
The following review of Dawn Powell's book ' She Walks in Beauty' is clipped from the Houston Chronicle. Many Shelby people have already read the book and enjoy the local atmosphere as Dawn Powell is a Shelby girl and Shelby and several surrounding towns and cities are prominent in the book.PP A thoroughly good little story of two girls and their life as inmates of a dingy boarding house in a tiny Ohio town – one of them actually saw beauty about her constantly while the other in her veneer of stifled respectability could never have recognized the divine goddess under any circumstances.

"The creation of excellent character studies has been well executed by Dawn Powell. It seems to be an art she is master of without effort. Her sketches are drawn with clear broad strokes, yet the shadings are somewhat subtle. It is a 'Main Street' sort of book, although with dual apologies to Sinclair Lewis, we prefer it to Main Street. It gives an intimate impression of personalities whose growth has been stunted by life in the little Middle Western town.

"Over Aunt Jule's hung a shadow, the stigma of something not quite respectable. Aunt Jule, the grandmother of Linda and Dorrie, took boards, saw no evil in any of them and sacrificed herself for their needs willingly. Country people, worn out troupers, livery stable inmates and sometimes women of dubious calling stopped at Aunt Jules's. She received them all with the same hospitality and provided for them alike. To Linda who cherished social aspirations, the boarding house was a thorn in her side. Desperately she struggled against every insult to her prim sensibilities, hurling recrimination at the heads of every unwelcome boarder, behind their backs. Linda's clothes were always impeccable, Linda's mind and instincts were neatly ordered, and yet her abhorrence of her surroundings never quite drove her away to less chaotic fields. For Linda loved Courtney Stall, the son of the Birchfield's social arbiters, and she dare not leave the premises until she found her dream of marriage with him to come true.

"Dorris, on the other hand, worshipped at the shrine of Glamour, wrote poetry in her attic, and loved impulsively the entire human race. Walking in beauty was Dorrie's one joy, that colored her whole existence. Dorrie was more like Aunt Jule, one of the beings in the dingy world blessed with imagination – one of the chosen ones.

"Mr. Wickley, the bed-ridden old scholar; Marie Farley, who mourned for her lost New York; the Winslows, who wanted to settle down but never could resist the glare of the footlights; Esther Mason, country girl turned loose in what was to her a city, with the usual results; Miss Bellaws, pitiful music teacher; Ella Morris, the crippled gossip; the magnificent Aunt Jule, all exemplify the artful genius of their author.

"Dorrie will be a joy to many readers – no Pollyanna sort of person you understand, but thoroughly real, just as all the rest of them are in lesser degrees.

"Old Mr. Wickley once said to her: 'Enjoy beauty, don't try to posses it. It is the mask for decay. Decay is the mask for beauty. The thing that is important is to watch life mirrored in a dark pool lest you see reality and be turned to stone. ' ”

"Speaking of Dawn Powell she speaks for herself as does her book: 'I was born in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, and I am 28 years old. All of Ohio is simply with my family, the Powells, and the Shermans, and at a distance I get quite sentimental about them. I graduated from Lake Erie College and no one was more amazed than myself. Then I came to New York to make my fortune. I had only $6 when I came – that was nine years ago – and now that is gone so you can see the city really has got to me. From the time I was strong enough to hold a pencil I wrote stories in apple trees, cellars, old sleighs, under the front porch and more recently in Central Park where I completed 'She Walks in Beauty. ' ”





Austin American – Statesman (Austin, Texas) – June 3, 1928
By Jane Anderson
“ 'She Walks in Beauty' by Dawn Powell, Brentano's Publishers, N. Y., Price $2.50
“There is certainly a warm spot in your heart for each of the lodgers of Aunt Jule's rooming house. From Aunt Jule herself, a wise easy, peculiar soul, to Mr. Wickly, the crazed old man who occupied the attic bedroom and was the idol of Aunt Jule's youngest granddaughter. Although at times some minor character almost steals the center stage because of Dawn Powell's power to get over her idea, Linda Shirley, the older granddaughter, is the one who walks in the beauty of life and her dream until this dream finally comes true. When a new-comer arrives you forget about the other characters, so absorbed are you in this new one, until he is settled into the routine of the house.

“Linda tries to get her grandmother to be more particular about whom she took into her house, but Jule was old and admitted to anyone but Linda that she liked the excitement always present around her rooming house that would be lacking if she admitted only quiet persons who would not furnish her this entertainment. She loved her entertainment at the expense of the others. Linda had always known why everyone snubbed her and she blamed her grandmother, but she held to her ideals and felt that if she was good despite her environments some one would find her and see she was worthy. She hoped it would be the man of her dreams, a boy of a prominent Birchfield family who had been her secret lover since childhood. It was as she hoped but it took the roomer she hated most to bring it about, and far be it from Linda to ever blame her love for being led off by this bad character. She was cold and hard in her dealings with everyone but never could see a fault in the man of her dreams. Dorrie was very different from her sister, although she admired this sister even if she was rather afraid of her and storied to her when accused of wearing her things and using her toilet articles. It was not until she was grown and in love that she could see Linda's side; the reason people refused to have anything to do with them was because of the section of town and the kind of house they lived in. She had never really cared before.

“Like many others this writer has presented the everyday thing but in such a forceful way that her characters will long remain in the reader's mind.”





The Evening Sun (Baltimore, Maryland) – June 9, 1928 Dawn Powell's Novel “ 'She Walks in Beauty,' by Dawn Powell (Brentano) comes out of the Middle West and has some of the human quality of Edna Ferber and Ruth Suckow, with a little of the sardonic cynicism of Sherwood Anderson. It is not a great book, but it is conscientiously well done.

“Aunt Jule runs a boarding house at the wrong end of Birchfield, Ohio. Too kind-hearted to turn anyone down, and persistently optimistic in human nature, perpetually proved so fallible, she harbors all kinds of derelicts, both social and financial. Linda, now 20 years old, is violently disapproving of her grandmother's laxness and blames her bitterly for the social ostracism she has to endure because of the boarding house.

“Even Dorrie, her younger sister, begins to be conscious of her unfortunate entourage. For the rest, both Linda and Dorrie have rather improbable romances and there are clever sketches of the various inhabitants, both transitory and permanent, of 'Aunt Jules.' ”





The Daily Globe Ads - August 1928


Sioux City Journal (Sioux City, Iowa) August 5, 1928

The Prize Winner
" 'She Walks in Beauty,' by Dawn Powell, Brentano's.
Reviewed by Edith Lamar, Sioux City:

"She is a girl named Dorrie, who is indifferently brought up in an Ohio boarding house, kept by her grandmother. By putting in high relief the town's bad girl, its gossip, its respectable people, its occasional traveling show visitors - all written about in a careless, very amusing style - the author has gradually brought out the unusual figure of Dorrie. You recognize that Dorrie is a poet with genius, and there isn't a line of verse quoted in the whole book. Quite an accomplishment!"


Dayton Daily News – August 24, 1928

“Dawn Powell, author of 'She Walks in Beauty', is spending the summer on Long Island, dividing her time between canoeing, working on a new novel, and investigating jellyfish. The canoeing and the jellyfish probe may never amount to anything in a big way, but the author is frankly delighted in the new book, 'Because,' she explains, 'it's going to be just the kind of book I like to read, and I've never written anything like that before.' Like 'She Walks in Beauty' the new work concerns a phase of Ohio life that is intimate, yes, very intimate! And has nothing whatever to do with fish.”





The Marion Star (Marion, Ohio) – December 21, 1928 “MT. GILEAD GIRL'S BOOK RANKS HIGH”

“ ' She Walks in Beauty', the comparatively new novel of a Mt. Gilead girl, Dawn Powell, was chosen as one of the 25 best novels of 1928 in a list compiled by The New York Times. Her latest book, 'The Bride's House,' will be published by Brentano's in February.”



The Bride's House


1. Dawn Powell - A Bibliography, Tim Page, Henry Holt and Company - 1998.

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