Manuscript Register

This document describes a collection of materials held by the
Special Collections Department
University of Iowa Libraries
Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1420
Phone: 319-335-5921
Fax: 319-335-5900
e-mail: lib-spec@uiowa.edu

Posted to Internet: 1998

Acquisition Note: These papers were given to the Univesity of Iowa Libraries by Marjorie Medary, beginning in 1946.

Access and Restrictions: This collection is open for research.

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Biographical Note

Marjorie Medary, daughter and granddaughter of Waukon newspaper editors and publishers, was born in Waukon in 1930. A graduate of Cornell College, she wrote a history of the college for its centennial celebration in 1953 which was published in The Palimpsest (Vol. 34, No. 4, April 1953) by the State Historical Society. After receiving her M.A. degree from Northwestern in 1914, she taught school in New England and later in Indianapolis, and then went into publishing work in order to further a career in writing. Miss Medary has managed to divide her time between the creative and practical fields by spending seven months of the year writing in her home, "Halcyon House," in Hampton, Connecticut, and the remainder of each year living in an apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts while she edits textbooks for Ginn & Company in Boston. Prior to her eventual position with Ginn & Company she had worked as assistant editor in the school department of McGraw-Hill in New York.

At Cornell, Marjorie Medary had experimented with short stories and verse in the style of what was then appearing in the Atlantic. When she attended a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference one summer, the "negative reaction" her work received was just stimulus enough to make her persevere and prove that she could be a writer. Later, when two stories which happened to be about children were accepted for publication, she decided that her talent lay in that direction. Her books for teenagers have not been about modern teenagers, whom she says she does not know well enough, but rather have dealt with fictional ones against a historical background. Prairie Printer (a sequel to Buckeye Boy), which is about a pioneer northeast Iowa newspaperman, is based on the experiences of her grandfather, Thomas Corwin Medary. Her first book, Orange Winter, originated from a combination of her own girlhood reminiscences of a trip to Florida and her mother's anecdotes about Florida in the 1870's. College in Crinoline and Prairie Anchorage both have pioneer settings. Miss Medary's feeling is that there is a wealth of pioneer history of the Midwest which is as yet unrecorded, and as one who still has close ties with that era, she feels it incumbent upon her to set down this history, from the anecdotes and memories of the first settlers, in the form of literature. Her ideas on this subject may be found in an article she wrote for the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald at the time her Prairie Anchorage was due to be published (on August 30, 1933).

Inventory

Newspaper clippings, 1946 -- 1975.

Buckeye Boy. Draft, with revisions (pencil written). Galley proof, with Revisions. Revisions -- about 54pp. of scattered typewritten notes. Correspondence: 4-8-42: Longmans to Miss Medary 8-23-44: Longmans to Miss Medary.

College in Crinoline. Chapter I and a rough outline. First draft.

Edra of the Islands. First draft in longhand with a few notes and map.

Orange Winter. Printer's copy.

Prairie Anchorage. Chapters 14, 15, 16 -- first draft. Printer's copy.

Prairie Printer. Original version, handwritten with revisions. A later version, typewritten, incomplete (has missing pages), with revisions. Publisher's copy cortaining a few revisions. Galley proof. Page proof. Typed copy of dedication, contents and bibliography. Hand printed layout in pencil of fly-title, title page and half-title and corresponding pages (typewritten) with decorations (to be used) pasted on.

Topgallant, A Herring Gull. Printer's copy.