After Cross Creek

Spin-Off: A Cook’s Companion to Cross Creek
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,
Cross Creek Cookery.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942. In jacket. Tarr A 6.1.

One of the chapters in Cross Creek, “Our Daily Bread,” describes Rawlings’s experience as a cook, and her relish for the food culture of central Florida.  This spin-off book mixes brief anecdotes with the recipes themselves, which include entrees using fish and game, but are heaviest on breads and desserts.   The breakfast section of the book was also published in Woman’s Home Companion (November 1942).

Cross Creek Cookery in Britain
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,
Cross Creek Cookery.
London: Hammond, Hammond, and Company, 1960.  In jacket. Tarr A 6.2. 

Surprisingly, after a gap of eighteen years, a British edition of Cross Creek Cookery was published in 1960, though the cover illustration looks more like the Mediterranean than the Florida Scrub.

A Preface to Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield, Stories.
A Selection made by J. Middleton Murry.
Introduction by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
Cleveland and New York: World Publishing, 1946.  Tarr B 9.

Rawlings wrote relatively little about other writers, or the craft of writing, so this tribute to Mansfield’s short stories is of especial interest.

Answering Fan Mail, 1942
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Typed Letter, Signed, 1 p., to “Miss Davison,”
August 12, 1942

This simple note must be representative of hundreds Rawlings would have had to write to fans.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Hollywood

In 1946, Rawlings was asked by MGM to do a story that could star Lassie with Claude Jarman, Jr. (Jody from The Yearling).  Rawlings adapted her earlier story about an orphan and a dog, “A Mother in Mannville” (Saturday Evening Post, 1936), and the movie was released in 1949, retitled The Sun Comes Up, with music by a young Andre Previn.  The credits said it was “based on the novel” by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; Rawlings published a narrative version of her treatment as a serial in the Saturday Evening Post in 1947, under the title Mountain Prelude, but Scribner’s withdrew their offer to publish it in book form.

The Sun Comes Up (1946)  

Publicity stills from the MGM movie released in 1946, starring Lassie and Claude Jarman, Jr. (Jody from The Yearling), for which Rawlings had adapted her earlier story,  “A Mother in Mannville.”

A Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Letter from 1946
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek: Typed letter, signed (2 pp.), to Robert Sisk, August 19, 1946.

The movie producer Robert Sisk , who had worked with Rawlings on her Lassie movie The Sun Comes Up, had asked her about a possible movie based on her early novel Golden Apples.   The Gentleman’s Companion , a pre-War book about food and wine by the travel and cookery writer Charles H. Baker, had just been issued by Crown in a new edition. 

Mountain Prelude, 1947: the novel that Scribner’s rejected
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,
“Mountain Prelude,” Saturday Evening Post (April 26-May 31, 1947), six parts.

When Rawlings was first commissioned to write the Lassie story for MGM, Scribner’s expected to publish it as a novel also.  Once it was written, Perkins had to tell her that the story, first titled “A Family for Jock” and then “Mountain Prelude,” would not make a novel, though he encouraged her to pursue magazine publication, resulting in this serial.