'Misty of Chincoteague' author life's work lives at University of Minnesota. A new book uncovers her collection
"Dear Readers and Riders: The Beloved Books, Faithful Fans, and Hidden Private Life of Marguerite Henry” is a biography shares insights of Henry's life thanks to a collection of her work at the University of Minnesota.
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Whether you’re eight or in your eighties, you’re likely familiar with the best-selling children’s book author Marguerite Henry. Her book “Misty of Chincoteague” is one of the most popular children’s books of all time. It's about a pony named Misty, and any horse loving kid will tell you they read that book cover to cover, multiple times, and probably have the Misty Breyer horse model somewhere still in their possession.
Marguerite Henry was born in Milwaukee in 1902 and died in California in 1997. Her life's work, all of her notes and papers, is now at the University of Minnesota. It has become the basis of the new book, “Dear Readers and Riders: The Beloved Books, Faithful Fans, and Hidden Private Life of Marguerite Henry.” The biography was written by Lettie Teague, The Wall Street Journal’s wine columnist.
Lettie visited the Twin Cities to talk about the book Tuesday night at Elmer L Anderson Library on the University of Minnesota campus and she joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer for a conversation about her work.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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Audio transcript
CATHY WURZER: Whether you're eight or in your 80s, you are likely familiar with the best-selling children's book author, Marguerite Henry. Her book, Misty of Chincoteague, is one of the most popular children's books of all time. It's about a pony named Misty. And any horse-loving kid will tell you that they read that book cover to cover multiple times and probably have the Misty Breyer horse model somewhere still in their possession.
Marguerite Henry was born in Milwaukee in 1902, died in California in 1997. Her life's work, all of her notes and papers, are at the University of Minnesota. And it has become the basis of the new book, Dear Readers and Writers, The Beloved Books, Faithful Fans, and Hidden Private Life of Marguerite Henry. The biography was written by Lettie Teague, The Wall Street Journal's wine columnist.
Lettie's in town for a talk about the book tonight at the Elmer L. Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota. And she's on the line right now. Lettie, thank you for taking the time to talk with me.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Thanks so much for having me. It's a great pleasure to be with you.
CATHY WURZER: Well, great pleasure is mine. You're a horse person. You have horses and you ride. Were you a horse-crazy kid?
LETTIE TEAGUE: I was. I really was, much to my parents' chagrin, yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
CATHY WURZER: Marguerite's books were part of my life. I read and reread and would draw pictures of the Wesley Dennis illustrations from her books when I was a kid.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Oh, my gosh.
CATHY WURZER: Oh, yeah, yeah. And I did get my horse until I was, oh, in my 30s. So--
LETTIE TEAGUE: Oh, really?
CATHY WURZER: --you started a little bit younger than I did.
LETTIE TEAGUE: I did, but they were a series of cheap horses that I really had no business buying, so.
[LAUGHTER]
Would that I should have waited till I was an old-- well, actually, no. An older, wiser adult, I continued to buy unsuitable horses, so.
CATHY WURZER: Well, yeah. Get in line. That's OK. Well, when you were a kid, which of Marguerite's books resonated most with you?
LETTIE TEAGUE: I have to say, I loved Misty of Chincoteague, but it wasn't Misty of Chincoteague, and I know that's practically heresy, but it was Born to Trot. And maybe that's because I was born in the Midwest, where harness horse racing was-- and to a certain degree, still is-- a big deal.
And it really resonated because it was the true story of a boy, a sickly boy, which kind of mirrored Marguerite Henry's own childhood, where she had rheumatic fever and had to stay home for years, actually, as a young child. And the same was true of Gibson White, who was the young boy at the center of that story, and the horse Rosalind, who his father gifts to him to inspire him to get well.
And then that horse went on to win the Hamiltonian, which is basically the Kentucky Derby of horseracing. And then there's the story within the story of the father of horse racing-- of all harness horses, rather-- Hamiltonian himself. So, [LAUGHS] lots of--
CATHY WURZER: It's a good book.
LETTIE TEAGUE: --heartache and true stories. Yeah.
CATHY WURZER: Yeah, I loved--
LETTIE TEAGUE: What was yours?
CATHY WURZER: My favorite, King of the Wind.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Oh, yeah.
CATHY WURZER: Did I mess that up? Yeah, I think that's-- yeah, yeah.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Another story of horses and heartbreak.
CATHY WURZER: Exactly. Well, yeah, I loved her books, and so, of course, did generations of readers. Why do you think they still are so popular?
LETTIE TEAGUE: Well, I think-- oh, sorry, yeah.
CATHY WURZER: They've lasted the test of time.
LETTIE TEAGUE: But I think boys and girls-- and especially girls-- still fall in love with horses. And because at the heart of all of Marguerite's books-- and there were 59 of them-- were-- well, almost all-- were true stories. I mean, so the truth of the story and the emotional truth of the story of the boys and girls and the fact that Misty of Chincoteague was published in 1947 and still sells-- this is according to Simon and Schuster-- 50,000 copies a year--
CATHY WURZER: Wow.
LETTIE TEAGUE: --and in fact, they just came out with a new edition this fall-- is tremendous and has inspired a tourism tsunami to that little island off the coast of Virginia to this day. So I think because they-- and it inspired so many children to want to have their own wild pony, much to the chagrin of their parents, I'm sure.
CATHY WURZER: That's why some of us got the Breyer horses, though.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Yeah, right. [LAUGHS] The plastic model is much easier in so many ways. Yeah.
CATHY WURZER: Exactly. Marguerite was an interesting character. She really was a very private person. And I'm wondering, what did you uncover that surprised you about her?
LETTIE TEAGUE: She was very private. She was very generous in her correspondence with children and talked to them. But she was very ungenerous in terms of revealing much about herself.
She was, I guess, the perfect correspondent in that regard because she-- and she corresponded with tens of thousands of children. And that was one of the beautiful things about the Marguerite Henry collection here at the Kerlan at the University's Elmer Andersen Library, is that so much of her correspondence is here in the research-- in the research archives, rather.
And but she didn't reveal much of herself. She wanted to know about them and their hopes and their desires and their longing, oftentimes, for a horse. But she was very circumspect about her private life.
CATHY WURZER: What surprised me when I saw your book-- I loved it, and I thought, yay, I'm glad someone finally did a biography of Marguerite Henry. What surprised me was her papers ended up at the University of Minnesota. And I thought, wait a minute, how did that happen? What's the story?
LETTIE TEAGUE: She made a connection with a professor of children's literature at the time many decades-- well, some decades-- before her death. And I think she was just so captivated by the fact that the university has this tremendous collection of children's literature, that it seemed like that was where her papers should end up.
And I mean, she's from, as you noted, from Milwaukee, so from the Midwest. And she lived most of her adult life in the Midwest until, eventually, in the later part of her life, she went to California. And her sisters and her brothers all lived in Wisconsin. So I think it seemed like the right place for her work to be.
CATHY WURZER: You're a writer and a equestrian, so you're a good person to write her biography, obviously. But you do write about wine, which--
LETTIE TEAGUE: Right. [LAUGHS]
CATHY WURZER: --which is interesting.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Which has nothing to do with--
CATHY WURZER: Exactly.
LETTIE TEAGUE: --the horses or Marguerite Henry books, yeah.
CATHY WURZER: Right. But you have the skills to do a really good biography. Did you find it difficult?
LETTIE TEAGUE: I did. I have to say, during the course of researching the book and then, later, writing it, I did think, do I really have any business writing this book? I've never written a biography. I've written wine books. And I write a wine column three out of four weeks of the month for The Journal.
But I thought, well, nobody else has done it, so why not me? And also, I cared so deeply about telling the truth of her stories. And also, quite honestly, bringing her books back to light-- with the exception of Misty of Chincoteague, so many of them, like King of the Wind and Born to Trot and Black Gold, so many of them have been forgotten, I think. And so to restore her to if not the forefront, then at least in the conversation about children's literature.
CATHY WURZER: Oh, I thought it was great, too-- and I did not know this till I read your book-- that Marguerite had success kind of late in life. I mean, she wasn't a young writer when she first hit that first big book, which was--
LETTIE TEAGUE: Right, middle-aged, yeah.
CATHY WURZER: --it kind of gave the rest of us, yeah, middle-aged people some hope.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Right.
[LAUGHTER]
CATHY WURZER: Right.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Yes, as a middle-aged person, I love giving middle-aged people hope. And that was the beauty. And she had to rewrite her first book many, many times before it was actually published. So there's that. And then but it was sort of like, well, once she got going, she really got going. And not only did she publish 59 books, but she had so many more books in some state of becoming that are here in the archives--
CATHY WURZER: Oh, wow.
LETTIE TEAGUE: --that she didn't get a chance to write.
CATHY WURZER: Well, Lettie, we've got to show up tonight. It's at 6:30--
LETTIE TEAGUE: Yay.
CATHY WURZER: --at the Elmer L. Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota. It's been a true pleasure speaking to you. Thank you for your work. You did a great job.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Oh, thank you so much. It was a great pleasure talking with you.
CATHY WURZER: Lettie Teague is the author of Dear Readers and Writers, The Beloved Books, Faithful Fans, and Hidden Private Life of Marguerite Henry. Again, that's tonight, 6:30 at the Elmer L. Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota. You can say hi to Lettie and talk horses.
Marguerite Henry was born in Milwaukee in 1902, died in California in 1997. Her life's work, all of her notes and papers, are at the University of Minnesota. And it has become the basis of the new book, Dear Readers and Writers, The Beloved Books, Faithful Fans, and Hidden Private Life of Marguerite Henry. The biography was written by Lettie Teague, The Wall Street Journal's wine columnist.
Lettie's in town for a talk about the book tonight at the Elmer L. Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota. And she's on the line right now. Lettie, thank you for taking the time to talk with me.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Thanks so much for having me. It's a great pleasure to be with you.
CATHY WURZER: Well, great pleasure is mine. You're a horse person. You have horses and you ride. Were you a horse-crazy kid?
LETTIE TEAGUE: I was. I really was, much to my parents' chagrin, yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
CATHY WURZER: Marguerite's books were part of my life. I read and reread and would draw pictures of the Wesley Dennis illustrations from her books when I was a kid.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Oh, my gosh.
CATHY WURZER: Oh, yeah, yeah. And I did get my horse until I was, oh, in my 30s. So--
LETTIE TEAGUE: Oh, really?
CATHY WURZER: --you started a little bit younger than I did.
LETTIE TEAGUE: I did, but they were a series of cheap horses that I really had no business buying, so.
[LAUGHTER]
Would that I should have waited till I was an old-- well, actually, no. An older, wiser adult, I continued to buy unsuitable horses, so.
CATHY WURZER: Well, yeah. Get in line. That's OK. Well, when you were a kid, which of Marguerite's books resonated most with you?
LETTIE TEAGUE: I have to say, I loved Misty of Chincoteague, but it wasn't Misty of Chincoteague, and I know that's practically heresy, but it was Born to Trot. And maybe that's because I was born in the Midwest, where harness horse racing was-- and to a certain degree, still is-- a big deal.
And it really resonated because it was the true story of a boy, a sickly boy, which kind of mirrored Marguerite Henry's own childhood, where she had rheumatic fever and had to stay home for years, actually, as a young child. And the same was true of Gibson White, who was the young boy at the center of that story, and the horse Rosalind, who his father gifts to him to inspire him to get well.
And then that horse went on to win the Hamiltonian, which is basically the Kentucky Derby of horseracing. And then there's the story within the story of the father of horse racing-- of all harness horses, rather-- Hamiltonian himself. So, [LAUGHS] lots of--
CATHY WURZER: It's a good book.
LETTIE TEAGUE: --heartache and true stories. Yeah.
CATHY WURZER: Yeah, I loved--
LETTIE TEAGUE: What was yours?
CATHY WURZER: My favorite, King of the Wind.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Oh, yeah.
CATHY WURZER: Did I mess that up? Yeah, I think that's-- yeah, yeah.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Another story of horses and heartbreak.
CATHY WURZER: Exactly. Well, yeah, I loved her books, and so, of course, did generations of readers. Why do you think they still are so popular?
LETTIE TEAGUE: Well, I think-- oh, sorry, yeah.
CATHY WURZER: They've lasted the test of time.
LETTIE TEAGUE: But I think boys and girls-- and especially girls-- still fall in love with horses. And because at the heart of all of Marguerite's books-- and there were 59 of them-- were-- well, almost all-- were true stories. I mean, so the truth of the story and the emotional truth of the story of the boys and girls and the fact that Misty of Chincoteague was published in 1947 and still sells-- this is according to Simon and Schuster-- 50,000 copies a year--
CATHY WURZER: Wow.
LETTIE TEAGUE: --and in fact, they just came out with a new edition this fall-- is tremendous and has inspired a tourism tsunami to that little island off the coast of Virginia to this day. So I think because they-- and it inspired so many children to want to have their own wild pony, much to the chagrin of their parents, I'm sure.
CATHY WURZER: That's why some of us got the Breyer horses, though.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Yeah, right. [LAUGHS] The plastic model is much easier in so many ways. Yeah.
CATHY WURZER: Exactly. Marguerite was an interesting character. She really was a very private person. And I'm wondering, what did you uncover that surprised you about her?
LETTIE TEAGUE: She was very private. She was very generous in her correspondence with children and talked to them. But she was very ungenerous in terms of revealing much about herself.
She was, I guess, the perfect correspondent in that regard because she-- and she corresponded with tens of thousands of children. And that was one of the beautiful things about the Marguerite Henry collection here at the Kerlan at the University's Elmer Andersen Library, is that so much of her correspondence is here in the research-- in the research archives, rather.
And but she didn't reveal much of herself. She wanted to know about them and their hopes and their desires and their longing, oftentimes, for a horse. But she was very circumspect about her private life.
CATHY WURZER: What surprised me when I saw your book-- I loved it, and I thought, yay, I'm glad someone finally did a biography of Marguerite Henry. What surprised me was her papers ended up at the University of Minnesota. And I thought, wait a minute, how did that happen? What's the story?
LETTIE TEAGUE: She made a connection with a professor of children's literature at the time many decades-- well, some decades-- before her death. And I think she was just so captivated by the fact that the university has this tremendous collection of children's literature, that it seemed like that was where her papers should end up.
And I mean, she's from, as you noted, from Milwaukee, so from the Midwest. And she lived most of her adult life in the Midwest until, eventually, in the later part of her life, she went to California. And her sisters and her brothers all lived in Wisconsin. So I think it seemed like the right place for her work to be.
CATHY WURZER: You're a writer and a equestrian, so you're a good person to write her biography, obviously. But you do write about wine, which--
LETTIE TEAGUE: Right. [LAUGHS]
CATHY WURZER: --which is interesting.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Which has nothing to do with--
CATHY WURZER: Exactly.
LETTIE TEAGUE: --the horses or Marguerite Henry books, yeah.
CATHY WURZER: Right. But you have the skills to do a really good biography. Did you find it difficult?
LETTIE TEAGUE: I did. I have to say, during the course of researching the book and then, later, writing it, I did think, do I really have any business writing this book? I've never written a biography. I've written wine books. And I write a wine column three out of four weeks of the month for The Journal.
But I thought, well, nobody else has done it, so why not me? And also, I cared so deeply about telling the truth of her stories. And also, quite honestly, bringing her books back to light-- with the exception of Misty of Chincoteague, so many of them, like King of the Wind and Born to Trot and Black Gold, so many of them have been forgotten, I think. And so to restore her to if not the forefront, then at least in the conversation about children's literature.
CATHY WURZER: Oh, I thought it was great, too-- and I did not know this till I read your book-- that Marguerite had success kind of late in life. I mean, she wasn't a young writer when she first hit that first big book, which was--
LETTIE TEAGUE: Right, middle-aged, yeah.
CATHY WURZER: --it kind of gave the rest of us, yeah, middle-aged people some hope.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Right.
[LAUGHTER]
CATHY WURZER: Right.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Yes, as a middle-aged person, I love giving middle-aged people hope. And that was the beauty. And she had to rewrite her first book many, many times before it was actually published. So there's that. And then but it was sort of like, well, once she got going, she really got going. And not only did she publish 59 books, but she had so many more books in some state of becoming that are here in the archives--
CATHY WURZER: Oh, wow.
LETTIE TEAGUE: --that she didn't get a chance to write.
CATHY WURZER: Well, Lettie, we've got to show up tonight. It's at 6:30--
LETTIE TEAGUE: Yay.
CATHY WURZER: --at the Elmer L. Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota. It's been a true pleasure speaking to you. Thank you for your work. You did a great job.
LETTIE TEAGUE: Oh, thank you so much. It was a great pleasure talking with you.
CATHY WURZER: Lettie Teague is the author of Dear Readers and Writers, The Beloved Books, Faithful Fans, and Hidden Private Life of Marguerite Henry. Again, that's tonight, 6:30 at the Elmer L. Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota. You can say hi to Lettie and talk horses.
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