Barbara Newhall Follett

Barbara Newhall Follett was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on March 4, 1914, to Wilson Follett, a literary editor, critic and university lecturer, and children's writer Helen Thomas Follett. She had an elder half-sister, named Grace, from her father's first marriage, as well as a younger sister, Sabra Follett, later Sabra Follett Meservey — the first woman to be admitted as a graduate student to Princeton University, in 1961.[5] Schooled at home by her mother, Barbara showed an early aptitude for reading and writing, as she began to write her own poetry by the age of four.[4] Barbara was an imaginative and intelligent child: by age seven, she had begun to put to paper her own imaginary world, Farksolia, and to develop its language, Farksoo.[6] Somewhat a child of nature, Barbara's stories and poems often dealt with the natural world and the wilderness.

In 1923, when Follett was only eight years old, she began writing The Adventures of Eepersip, later titled The House Without Windows, as a birthday present for her mother using a small portable typewriter she had been given. The story concerned a young girl, named Eepersip, who runs away from home and family to live happily in nature, complete with animal friends.[6] Though later that year her manuscript burned in a house fire, Follett rewrote the entire story and her father, an editor at the Knopf publishing house, supervised its publication in 1927. With the help and guidance of Follett's father, The House Without Windows was accepted and published in 1927 by Knopf to critical acclaim by The New York Times, the Saturday Review, and H. L. Mencken.[3][4] Due to this early success, Barbara was hailed by some as a child genius. Her opinion was sought out by radio stations and she was asked to review other children's books, such as Now We Are Six by British author A. A. Milne.[7]

Follett's next novel, The Voyage of the Norman D., was based on her experience on a coastal schooner in Nova Scotia. It was published a year later in 1928, also receiving critical acclaim in many literary publications.

However, in the same year, Follett's father abandoned her mother for another woman. The event was a devastating blow to Follett, who was deeply attached to her father.[3] Aged 14, she had reached the apex of her life and career.[3][4]

My dreams are going through their death flurries. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money.[8]

Subsequently, her family fell upon hard times. By the age of 16, as the Great Depression was deepening, Follett was working as a secretary in New York City.[3] She wrote several more manuscripts, including the novel-length Lost Island and Travels Without a Donkey, a travelogue (the title plays on Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey).

In the summer of 1931, Follett met Nickerson Rogers. The couple spent the summer of 1932 walking the Appalachian Trail from Katahdin to the Massachusetts border, then sailed to Spain where they continued their walking excursions in Mallorca and through the Swiss Alps. After settling in Brookline, Massachusetts, the couple married in July 1934. At this time, Barbara still wrote, but her work was no longer in favor with publishers. Although initially happy, by 1937 Barbara had started expressing dissatisfaction concerning married life in her letters to close friends, and by 1938 these cracks had widened even further.[6] Follett soon came to believe that Rogers was being unfaithful to her and became depressed.[3]

According to her husband, on December 7, 1939, Follett left their apartment after a quarrel with $30 in her pocket ($589 in 2021). She was never seen again.[4]

Rogers did not report Follett's disappearance to police for two weeks, claiming that he was waiting for her to return. Four months after notifying police, he requested a missing persons bulletin be issued. As the bulletin was issued under Follett's married name of "Rogers", it went unnoticed by the media, which did not learn of her disappearance until 1966.

In 1952, thirteen years after Follett disappeared, her mother Helen began insisting that Brookline Police investigate the matter more thoroughly. Helen had become suspicious of Rogers after she discovered that he had made little effort to find his wife. In a letter to Rogers, she wrote: "All of this silence on your part looks as if you had something to hide concerning Barbara's disappearance ... You cannot believe that I shall sit idle during my last few years and not make whatever effort I can to find out whether Bar is alive or dead, whether, perhaps, she is in some institution suffering from amnesia or nervous breakdown."[3]

Follett's body was never found, and law enforcement did not find evidence either indicating or excluding foul play. The date and circumstances of her death were not established.[3]

In 2019, writer Daniel Mills published a theory that Follett's body was found but not identified correctly. After investigating multiple missing persons cases, Mills claimed to have found evidence that the body of Follett was discovered in 1948, but was misidentified as another missing individual, Elsie Whittemore. He explained that the body was found on Pulsifer Hill, half a mile from a farmhouse where Follett and Rogers had a long-standing rental agreement. The possessions found with the body were consistent with Follett's belongings. However, local police were unaware of her disappearance and had no record of it. The cause of death was determined to be suicide, as a bottle containing barbiturate residue was found at the scene—a substance Follett was known to have taken.[9]

• The House Without Windows & Eepersip's Life There. New York and London: Knopf 1927. OCLC 870940 (Reprinted 1968, New York: Avon Camelot.) (Reprinted 2019, London: Hamish Hamilton OCLC 1112384789)
• The Voyage of the Norman D.. New York and London: Knopf 1928. OCLC 3561118
• Lost Island (Plus Three Stories and an Afterword). Farksolia 2020 ISBN 9780996243148

• List of people who disappeared

Citations

• Biaggio, Maryka (2021).The Point of Vanishing. Mechanicsburg, PA: Milford House Press. ISBN 978-1-62006-622-5
• McCurdy, Harold Grier (1966). Barbara: The Unconscious Autobiography of a Child Genius. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina. ISBN 978-0-8078-0989-1.
• Wood, Naomi (1995). "Who Writes and Who Is Written?: Barbara Newhall Follett and Typing the Natural Child". Children's Literature. Project Muse. 23 (1): 45–46. doi:10.1353/chl.0.0184.
• Cooke, Stefan (2015). Barbara Newhall Follett: A Life in Letters. Somerville, MA: Farksolia. p. 638. ISBN 978-0-9962431-1-7.
• Hulbert, Ann (2018). Off the Charts. New York: Knopf. p. 400. ISBN 978-1-1019472-9-6
• Smith, Laura (2018). The Art of Vanishing. New York: Viking. p. 272. ISBN 978-0-3995635-8-4
• Schmeidler, Lynn (2018). History of Gone. El Paso, TX: Veliz Books. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-9969134-7-8

• Farksolia site with some of Follett's work maintained by Stefan Cooke, Follett's half-nephew
• Astral Aviary: The Barbara Newhall Follett Archive
• Archived and current version of 2010 Vanishing Act article by Paul Collins at Lapham's Quarterly
• March 4, 2014 – Barbara Newhall Follett's 100th Birthday by Stefan Cooke
• The Child Genius Who Vanished: What Happened to Barbara Newhall Follett? 2016 article by Gary Sweeney
• The Wunderkind Writer Who Disappeared Without a Trace at Age 25 2016 article by Abby Norman
• The House Without Windows public domain e-book
• Follett's archived papers at Columbia University Library
• A Place of Vanishing: Barbara Newhall Follett and the Woman in the Woods 2019 article by Daniel Mills
• Finding aid to Barbara Newhall Follett papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
• Finding aid to Helen Follett papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.