Josephine Johnson
Josephine W. Johnson (1910–1990) was a novelist and nature writer who in 1935 became the youngest person to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her first novel, Now in November. She began her studies at Washington University and went on to write eleven books over the course of her life. When it was originally published in 1969, The Inland Island, her lyrical examination of a year on her rambling thirty-seven-acre farm in Ohio, became a beloved and critically acclaimed bestseller.
All Books By Josephine Johnson
Now in November
- By: Josephine Johnson
- Narrator: Carlotta Brentan
- Length: 5 hours 24 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
-
3.7(1373 ratings)
A lost gem of twentieth-century literature, Josephine Johnson’s 1934 Pulitzer Prize-winning “exquisite…heartbreakingly real” (The New York Times Book Review) novel follows a year in the life of a family struggling to survive the Dust Bowl.
Published when Josephine Johnson was only twenty-four years old, Now in November made Johnson the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1935. It is a beautifully told account of one farming family’s challenges to scrape by and earn a living from mortgaged land over the course of a single year, narrated by one of three sisters–the introspective and thoughtful Margaret. As the household is ravaged by Depression-era hardship and the environmental blights of the Dust Bowl, the family’s unique vulnerabilities are pushed to a breaking point.
In a style typical of Johnson’s body of work, Now in November is strikingly ahead of its time, grappling with questions of mental health, worker’s rights, as well as gender, race, and class and is ready to be rediscovered by a new generation of readers.
The Inland Island
- By: Josephine Johnson
- Narrator: Madeleine Maby
- Length: 5 hours 8 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
-
3.92(31 ratings)
“A beautiful book…about nature the way Walden was a book about nature. It should be read by everyone who still retains the capacity to feel anything” (The New York Times).
Stunningly written and fiercely observed, a new edition of a classic work of nature writing about a year on an Ohio farm, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Josephine Johnson.
Originally published in 1969, The Inland Island is Josephine W. Johnson’s startling and brilliant chronicle of nature and the seasons at her rambling thirty-seven-acre farm in Ohio, which she and her husband reverted to wilderness with the help of a state forester. Over the course of twelve months, she observes the changing landscape with a naturalist’s precision and a poet’s evocative language. Readers will marvel at the way she brings to life flashes of beauty, the inexorable cycle of growth and decay, and the creatures who live alongside her, great and small.
A forerunner of iconic American women nature writers and a champion of civil rights who marched in Washington against the Vietnam war, Johnson intersperses these “delicate marvels” (The New York Times) with profound reflections about racial inequality, urbanization, social justice, and environmental destruction that speak powerfully to our time.
Ready to be rediscovered by a new generation, The Inland Island is a vital and relevant meditation on nature and time, capturing the wonder, beauty, hope–and flaws–of our turbulent world.