Cross Creek, 1942

Advance Proofs for Cross Creek
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,
Cross Creek.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942.  Original wrappers.  

Rawlings’s bibliographer notes only three collections with copies of these advance proofs.

First Edition, First Printing
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,
Cross Creek.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942.  In jacket.  Tarr A 5.1.

Cross Creek, Rawlings’s first major book after The Yearling, was an adult, non-fiction (or slightly fictionalized) treatment of life in central Florida.   Its autobiographical focus on how Rawlings tackled difficulties alone, without a husband, must have had special resonance during the first year of U.S. involvement in World War II, but it also follows a tradition of 1930's American social description.

An Inscribed Copy of Cross Creek
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942.  In jacket. 
Inscribed “To Mary Taylor, Affectionately, . . . April 1942.”

Cross Creek was published on March 16, 1942.

The Shenton Illustrations to Cross Creek
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942.  In jacket.  
From the books of George D. Haimbaugh.

As he had done for The Yearling, Edward Shenton provided headpieces for each chapter in Cross Creek.   In December 1941, Shenton visited Rawlings in Florida. The jacket flap notes he had drawn his illustrations “on the scene.”

The Saturday Evening Post Features Life at Cross Creek
“Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Hunts for Her Supper,”
Saturday Evening Post (January 30, 1943): 26-27, 58.

This photo feature not only illustrates something of Rawlings’s life in Florida as she grew more prosperous, but also indicates the extent of public interest in her activities and the place she had made famous.

Cross Creek and the Book-of-the-Month Club

These 4-page leaflets advertising the Club’s monthly selections were printed with a blank back page, so that subscribers could glue them into the book itself. 

Cross Creek Condensed, in the Reader’s Digest
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,
“Cross Creek,”

Reader’s Digest (August 1942): 149-176.  Original wrappers.

The Armed Services Edition
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek.
ASE D-112.  New York: Council on Books in Wartime, 1943.  Original wrappers.  Tarr A 5.3. 

An estimated 50,000 copies of this ASE were distributed. 

A British Wartime Book Club Edition
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,
Cross Creek.
London: The Book Club, 1944.  In jacket.  Tarr A 5.4.

Despite its reduced format and thin paper, this wartime economy edition from Foyle’s Book Club still used the original Shenton illustrations, as the more substantial first British edition from Heinemann had also done.

Cross Creek as a Movie, 1983

Lobby cards and publicity stills from the movie of Cross Creek (Thorn EMI with HBO, 1983).  

Whether from its episodic nature or because of the on-going lawsuit against Rawlings over her depiction of her Florida neighbors, no movie version of Cross Creek was made in the years after publication.   In the 1980's, the coming of the home VCR and family-friendly cable TV made Cross Creek once again an attractive movie project.  The movie was immediately released on videotape both in standard VHS format and in Beta format, at that time preferred by many school districts.