Betsy-Tacy

Cover of the first edition of Betsy-Tacy (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1940), featuring Lois Lenski's illustrations.

The Betsy-Tacy books are a series of semi-autobiographical novels by American novelist and short-story writer Maud Hart Lovelace (1892-1980), which were originally published between 1940 and 1955 by the Thomas Y. Crowell Co. The books are now published by HarperCollins.[1] The first four books were illustrated by Lois Lenski and the remainder by Vera Neville.

The series follows the adventures of heroine Betsy Ray, who is based closely on the author, and her friends and family. The first book, Betsy-Tacy, begins in 1897 on the eve of Betsy's fifth birthday, and the last book, Betsy's Wedding, ends in 1917 as the United States prepares to enter the First World War.

History

The series was inspired by the bedtime stories which Lovelace told to her daughter Merian about her own childhood.[2] The popularity of Betsy-Tacy, published in 1940, led her to write three more books, Betsy-Tacy and Tib (1941), Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill (1942), and Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown (1943). Although Lovelace intended to end the series after four books, her husband and daughter, who had found her high-school diaries, insisted that she use them to extend it through Betsy's high school career.[3] This led to Heaven to Betsy (1945), Betsy in Spite of Herself (1946), Betsy was a Junior (1947), and Betsy and Joe (1948), each of which covers one high school year. Lovelace described these books, for which she drew heavily on her diaries and high-school scrapbooks, as particularly true to life. She wrote in 1964 that "the family life, customs, jokes, traditions are all true and the general pattern of the years is also accurate."[4]

The first eight books are set in the fictional town of Deep Valley, Minnesota, based on Lovelace's childhood home of Mankato. After completing Betsy and Joe Lovelace wrote the first two of her three "Deep Valley Books," Carney's House Party (1949) and Emily of Deep Valley (1950), in which Betsy Ray and other characters from the Betsy-Tacy series appear, before returning to Betsy's story. The final books in the series, Betsy and the Great World (1952) and Betsy's Wedding (1955), follow Betsy through a European sojourn and her first years of married life in Minneapolis. They are also based closely on Lovelace's personal experiences.

The Books

The Betsy-Tacy books, like other series such as the Harry Potter and Little House books, are written at progressively more difficult reading levels as the characters age and encounter more complex situations. The first books are written for children, while those at the end of the series are written for ages 14 and up.[5]

The Betsy-Tacy series

The Deep Valley books

Characters and Setting

Although the books are fiction, their characters are based closely on Lovelace's own family and friends. Many characters can be matched with individuals, while others are composites drawn from incidents in the lives of several people.[4]

Mankato's Carnegie Library. Betsy visits its Deep Valley equivalent for the first time in Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown.

The settings reflect extensive research done by Lovelace and, for the first four books, illustrator Lois Lenski,[9] as well as Lovelace's memories. Most of the novels take place in and around the fictional town of Deep Valley, Minnesota, which is based on the author's actual hometown of Mankato, Minnesota. The Ray family and other characters inhabit the houses of their real-life counterparts. Lovelace transformed the neighborhood of 332 and 333 Center Street, her own childhood home and that of Bick Kenney, into the fictional Hill Street, named after the adjoining Big Hill. As Betsy grows older, her horizons expand to include more of the town. Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown introduces the Carnegie Library and downtown Deep Valley with its shops and Opera House. The high school books bring in the surrounding countryside.

Lovelace utilized her own diaries and scrapbooks, contemporary materials such as magazines and catalogs, and correspondence with old friends and other past and present residents of Mankato who provided information to fill out her narratives.[9] "I could make it all up," she wrote, "but in these Betsy-Tacy stories, I love to work from real incidents."[4] Even scenes which are clearly invented share this attention to detail. For example, Betsy in Spite of Herself, in which Betsy visits her friend Tib and her family in Milwaukee, includes a scene where Betsy and the Mullers spend Christmas Eve at the home of Tib's Grosspapa Muller. There was no real-life Grosspapa Muller, Midge Gerlach's paternal grandfather having died before this 1907 visit, and much of the description of Christmas in a wealthy German household was taken from letters written by Kathleen Hart while she was studying in Germany.[10] Another detail, the cast-iron dwarves with which Grosspapa decorated his lawn during the summer, may have come from a then-recent source, novelist Edna Ferber's 1940 memoir A Peculiar Treasure, which states that when Ferber worked as a reporter in Milwaukee during 1906-09, the city's wealthy families decorated their lawns with painted dwarves.[11][12]

Reception

"Betsy's House," 333 Center Street, Mankato, is now a museum.

The Betsy-Tacy books were well-received, with the first edition of Betsy-Tacy going through more than thirty printings after initial publication. In the 1970s a paperback edition of the first six books in the series was published. However, during the 1980s, the books went out of print.[13]

In 1990, a group of adult fans of the series established the Betsy-Tacy Society in Mankato. The Society undertook a letter-writing campaign that convinced HarperCollins to bring the first four books back into print by 1992. Ultimately new editions of all ten Betsy-Tacy books and the three Deep Valley books were published, and as of 2016 all of the books remain available.[1][13]

The series had a cameo role in the 1998 film You've Got Mail, in which bookstore owner Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) describes the first two books of the series to young Annabel Fox (Hallee Hirsh), who immediately decides she wants them all.[14]

The Betsy-Tacy Society bought and restored the childhood homes of Maud Hart ("Betsy's House") and Bick Kenney ("Tacy's House"), and operates them as a museum.[15] In 2010, the Association of Library Trustees, Advocates, Friends and Foundations designated the site a National Literary Landmark.[16] The Minnesota History Center has included Maud Hart Lovelace as one of the characters in its "History Players" interpretive series, with a presentation focusing on her childhood and path to a literary career.[17]

References

  1. 1 2 "Discover Author Maud Hart Lovelace". HarperCollins. Retrieved August 9, 2016.
  2. ↑ Thomas, Robert McG., Jr. (October 5, 1997). "Merian L. Kirchner, 66, Dies; Inspired the Betsy-Tacy Books". The New York Times.
  3. 1 2 Klenk, Nancy (Fall 1998 – Winter 1999) [1953]. "Lovable Maud Hart Lovelace Interviewed on Origin of her Betsy-Tacy Series". The Betsy-Tacy Society Journal; originally published in the High News.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Whalen, Sharla Scannell. "Maud Hart Lovelace and Her World," in Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy and Joe (New York: Harper Trophy, 1995 [1948]),305-306.
  5. ↑ Merchant, Alice. "The Thirteen Betsy-Tacy Books" (PDF). The Betsy-Tacy Society. Retrieved December 4, 2014.
  6. 1 2 "Maud Hart Lovelace". The Betsy-Tacy Society. Retrieved December 4, 2014.
  7. ↑ "Kathleen Palmer Hart Foster". Find a Grave. May 2014. Retrieved December 4, 2014.
  8. ↑ www.voyageurweb.com, VoyageurWeb,. "Maud Hart Lovelace | Betsy-Tacy Society". www.betsy-tacysociety.org. Retrieved 2016-04-29.
  9. 1 2 Smith, Louisa (December 1997). "Friends and Collaborators: Lovelace and Lenski". Journal of the Betsy-Tacy Society.
  10. ↑ Whalen, Sharla Scannell (1995). The Betsy-Tacy Companion: A Biography of Maud Hart Lovelace. Whitehall, PA: Portarlington Press. p. 199.
  11. ↑ Ferber, Edna (1940). A Peculiar Treasure. New York: Garden City Publishing Co. pp. 131–132.
  12. ↑ Lovelace, Maud Hart (1946). Betsy in Spite of Herself (1994 ed.). New York: Harper Trophy. p. 138.
  13. 1 2 Nephew, Julia. "betsytacy: Publication History". betsytacy. Retrieved December 4, 2014.
  14. ↑ Klaas, Perri (September 21, 2012). "Growing Up Together: Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy Books". New York Times. Retrieved December 4, 2014.
  15. ↑ "Visitors and Tours". The Betsy-Tacy Society. Retrieved December 4, 2014.
  16. ↑ "Betsy-Tacy Houses". The Betsy-Tacy Society. Retrieved December 4, 2014.
  17. ↑ "Maud Hart Lovelace, 1892-1980: Author of the Betsy-Tacy Books". Minnesota History Center. Retrieved December 4, 2014.

Further reading

External links

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