Shelby Museum - Authors

Shelby Ohio Authors

DAWN POWELL


1929


The Daily Globe – March 13, 1929
“REVIEW OF 'THE BRIDE'S HOUSE'
“Author of 'She Walks in Beauty,' Gives Public Another Book.
"The many Shelby friends of Miss Dawn Powell will be pleased to read the review of her latest book 'The Bride's House' which was printed in the Detroit News recently. Miss Powell who is a niece of Mrs. May Steinbrueck of North Broadway is also author of 'She Walks in Beauty.' Miss Powell graduated from Shelby high school and Lake Erie College for women, locating in New York City where she has resided for a number of years. During her high school days she was employed on the reportorial staff of The Daily Globe and naturally The Globe and all her Shelby friends are more than pleased with her success.


Cover of the 1998 Steerforth paperback edition

"Here is the review of her latest book by John E. McManis in the Detroit News:
“Miss Powell has written one of the most unrestful disquisitions on life in general and marriage in particular that this country has known for many years. She has proved amply, that she is the creative genius which her first novel 'She Walks in Beauty,' forecast, and she shows herself one of the shrewdest and at the same time human of commentators on the dark side of that phenomenon we call life.

" 'The Bride's House' is a study of unrest. This spirit carries through the Truelove family, breaking its shored-up boundaries occasionally, but usually confined to the mental existence of its tortured victim. These Trueloves were people of strength and character and beauty, who at all times fell victims to the horrible tangents into which the mind can lead the body. Even though they appeared to live in the accustomed rut, outwardly calm and peaceful, they were inwardly torn and twisted by a mocking, malignant demon which made of their days and night times of horror and despair.

"Had Sophie Truelove known just what was in this freedom she sought, her ultimate destination might have been more conventionally happy. But she didn't know – and a Truelove was loath to ask for guidance in the fundamentals.

"It was not happiness she was after, but a place in which she could feel secure from the gnawing of her own mind. She typifies those pitiful people who will never know happiness, whose lives are horrid races against fate, and who are unhappy in the midst of contentment. It is a psychological state which was known to the Greeks, and which has led to supreme achievement and to suicide.

"It burns and boils until at last it destroys the frail vessel in which it is contained. This Miss Powell understands well. There is no remedy, save that of self-destruction, which Mary, Cecily, Sophie's sisters chose.

"This is not a story for men and women contented with life and at peace with the world. It will be beyond the imagination of such. But to a person who shares this frame of mind, the story will be magnificent - and horrible. It contains no salve for a bruised and wounded spirit.

"The masters of the Russian novel are recalled inevitably in a reading of 'The Bride's House.' There is that same starkness of fate, that same inexorable drawing of a deep black cloak about the spirit, and that same predetermined fate.

"And with the Russian come to mind Sherwood Anderson, who, like Miss Powell, is at his best in the Western Reserve region of Ohio. Miss Powell, fundamentally, is another Sherwood Anderson, with a more human touch and a more convincing manner in drawing character. Her books are warm and life-like, with very clear-cut people and emotions admirably portrayed. But her people are seekers and the contented in mind are warned away. Let them remain with their own happiness and not seek the dubious ashes of roses which lie in mental and spiritual unrest.”



Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio) – March 15, 1929

“Dawn Powell, the author of ' She Walks in Beauty' and the more recent 'Bride's House' (Brentano)
has returned from Coney Island, the playground of New York city, where she put the finishing touches on 'The Bride's House.' This perpetual Mardi Gras of the east with it's ballyhoo and carnival atmosphere is closed in the winter time and is a strange spot for an author to finish a novel, but it must be remembered that Dawn Powell completed ' She Walks in Beauty' on a bench in Central park in New York city. After gazing at the Atlantic ocean, the deserted boardwalks and closed concessions for a couple of days, Miss Powell decided to return to her city apartment and commence work on another novel. Arriving home she found her player piano had broken down, much to the delight of her friends, but until it is fixed Miss Powell will do no writing. It isn't that she likes music, but she finds that a player piano in action effectively shuts out conversation and unsought-for advice from callers.

“To vary her literary efforts Miss Powell sometimes turns her typewriter to plays. She has commenced a three-act comedy, entitled 'The Party.' ” (Later- 'Big Night')

“Dawn Powell was born in Mount Gilead, O., 28 years ago. She is married and is known as Mrs. Joseph Gousha.”



The Daily Globe – March 25, 1929
“THE BRIDE'S HOUSE'
(Dawn Powell)
“This is a book of women: a pair of spinsters, puttering and snickering into their neighbors' affairs; a country school teacher, sparse and feline, who soured with envy and wrecked a petty vengeance; Grandma Truelove who dozes in her chair, scorning the eternal sewing and child-bearing women: Cecily, her daughter-in-law, a wiry little soul so neat of body and mind that she dreaded the thought of Aunt Lotta Truelove, a creature of passions who had had three husbands and as many children but neglected them all for theosophy. Specifically, Cecily hated Lotta because Sophie, daughter of the house, was undeniably like her aunt- beautiful Sophie who wondered and waited and watched for her particular destiny.

"The destiny she saw at last in the cold blue eyes of Lynn Hamilton, a personable youth who had returned from the outside world to his Ohio farm. Quietly they planned a marriage which Sophie contemplates as a cure to her restlessness. But the black-eyed prodigal, son of the village doctor, thundered past her white bride's house on swift racing horses and lured her. And Sophie, hesitating, wondering, hoping he might have the answer Lynn had failed to give, staggered out to him in the stormy night, escaped with him to the great outside. Yet even in escaping she knew that some day she would come back to the white safety of Lynn and his house.

"Taut suspense snaps at the very end when Sophie succumbs to the inevitable. It is a sturdy small-town story, lightly, tensely, skillfully told.”



“Life Story of Little Heroine Dawn Powell Making Good in New York Gets Write Up in Sunday Paper.

“Our text for today's sermon dear Brethren, will be Dawn . . . try to think of someone as funny and tragic as Dorothy Parker (see below) . . . having that certain something of Helen Kane . . . the great dark eyes of Anita Loos . . . well, that's Dawn Powell . . . of Mt. Gilead, O . . . she is the author of 'Dance Night,' which received its premiere last week under the banner of Farrar and Rhinehart . . . it is the story of an Ohio boom town . . . city with factory smoke . . . noisy with laughter of factory girls and trainmen . . . these serve as background for the more intimate drama of a mother and her son and the two girls he loves and the one who loves him unrequitedly . . . the story threatens to attain the heights of a best seller . . which may or may not be for the good of Dawn Powell . . . the rest will be about the author . . . maybe her story is the story of Mt. Gilead . . or Galion . . or Marin's Ferry . . it is the story of the kind of a town in which she spent her childhood . . . kind relatives took a hand in the management of motherless Dawn until she was eleven . . then a step-mother assumed responsibility . . . in just a while Dawn put on her best embroidered dress . . . took 30 cents she had earned picking berries and reached Wellington, O. . . . the station agent at Wellington wired her aunt about the plight of her young niece . . . the aunt sent enough money for Dawn to complete the journey . . . when she was 16 Dawn became a reporter for the Daily Globe for $3 a week . . . even more welcome than the salary was the excuse for hanging around pool rooms . . . and garages . . . and jails . . . instead of staying home being brought up . . . she saved $25 out of her salary and enrolled at Lake Erie College, at Painesville . . . when she got there she was told that the money might be enough to cover the registration fee but certainly would not suffice for tuition . . . she could go home if she wished or - - - but Dawn explained simply and convincingly that there was for her no such place . . in fact, the only place she could stay was where she already was . . . so to pay for her tuition she did typewriting and secretarial work . . . in the last year of the war it was the fashion for schoolgirls to show their patriotism by working as farmerettes in order that the male workers might be released to enlist in the army . . . one woman who had a farm in Connecticut offered a single ticket for a lone farmerette to come out and hoe potatoes . . . Dawn Powell chose that because it meant being near New York . . . when autumn came Dawn wrote letters to all the magazines she could think of . . . McCall's . . . Woman's Home Companion . . . Century . . . the letters advised the editors to be sure and stay in a certain Thursday because she was coming to see them about a job . . whether it was they needed workers or that her letter pleased them or that they were charmed by her naivete not even Walter Winchell will ever know . . . but on the appointed day Dawn came up like thunder and the editors all turned out to meet her . . . four days later she had a job with the Butterick Co. . . . after that she stumbled into publicity work . . . began writing and selling short stories . . . then she married an advertising man . . . they lived on the top floor of a house on Riverside Drive and had a baby . . . in between the baby's bottles and housework Dawn wrote and at night she listened to intellectual friends talk music and art while she wished she could go to the Palace to see Joe Cook refuse to imitate four Hawaiians . . . for three years Dawn Powell tried to sell 'She Walks in Beauty,' her first novel, and her next, 'The Bride's House' . . . Perhaps she couldn't really write a novel she told herself . . . so she tried her hand at a play . . . but the same thing happened with the play then a publisher asked for her first book . . . and her second . . . presently publishers who had rejected her work began asking her for her next novel . . . and the play? . . . the same thing happened to that!”



Dorothy Parker - 1893-1967 - Wrote poetry (Enough Rope, 1926 etc.), short stories, book reviewer (New Yorker Magazine), Playwriter (Close Harmony, The Lady Next Door), screenwriter (A Star is Born), song writer. Often wrote with a witty but sometimes caustic, sardonic humor.

Helen Kane - 1904 - 1966 - A child-like leading lady singer who gained popularity during the flapper era, sometimes known for her catchy phrase, "Boop-Boop - De -Doop". "I Wanna Be Loved By You" was her signature song. She later became noted as the model for "Betty Boop".

Anita Loos - 1893 - 1981 - Screenwriter (16 extant films as screenwriter, 1912 - 1927, 14 extant films co-written, 1914 - 1926, and over 100 additional non-extant films). Actress , novelist (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1925). Career 1911 - 1942.

Dawn Powell - 1896 - 1965 - Short stories, novelist, Playwriter (Woman at Four O'clock) - Keep reading . . . .


DANCE NIGHT

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