Emilie Loring —Uncharted Seas with Patti Bender

Get ready to fall hopelessly in love with Emilie Loring, a New England native whose prolific output of richly-detailed romance novels feature the sort of charming characters and snappy dialogue reminiscent of films like The Philadelphia Story and It Happened One Night. Loring’s 30 years of commercial success continued long after her death in 1950, prompting publishers to sell ghost-written “Emilie Loring” novels that continued to sell by the tens of millions. Having read each of Loring’s novels at least 50 times each, guest Patti Bender joins us this week to talk about the author’s captivating life and work as told in her 2023 biography Happy Landings: Emilie Loring’s Life, Writing and Wisdom.

00:00 Introduction to Lost Ladies of Lit

02:04 Guest Introduction: Patti Bender, Emilie Loring's Biographer

05:19 Emilie Loring's Family: A Legacy of Creativity

08:15 Emilie Loring's Marriage and Early Life

10:37 Emilie's Writing Journey: Persistence and Passion

12:32 Exploring Emilie Loring's Romantic Novels

14:04 Diving into 'Uncharted Seas': An Emilie Loring Novel

22:26 The Role of Books During Difficult Times

25:35 Emilie's Legacy: Her Continued Popularity

27:28 Must-Read Loring Titles

28:45 The Hollywood Connection: Emilie's Stories and the Silver Screen

29:21 The Pulitzer Nomination

33:48 The Power of Re-reading: Emilie's Books as Comfort Food

35:15 Conclusion: The Lasting Impact of Emilie's Stories

Mentioned in this Episode

Hallmark movie Her Pen Pal

Happy Landings: Emilie Loring’s Life, Writing and Wisdom by Patti Bender

Lee and Shepard Publishing

George Melville Baker’s “Among the Breakers”

Snappy Stories

Uncharted Seas by Emilie Loring

The ghosts of Stone House in Blue Hill, Maine

The Philadelphia Story

It Happened One Night

National Velvet by Enid Bagnold

Transcript

AMY: Thank you for listening to Lost Ladies of Lit. For access to all of our future bonus episodes and to help support the cause of recovering forgotten women writers, join our Patreon community. Visit lostladiesoflit.com and click become a patron to find out more. 

KIM: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten women writers. Kim Askew…

AMY: …And I'm Amy Helmes. Fun fact about Kim and I: we've written a few Hallmark movies together.

KIM: Yeah, including Her Pen Pal, which aired in 2020. We've worked on a few more that will maybe see the light of day at some point. Anyway, our experience with Hallmark has really driven home for us what a huge and passionate fan base is out there for these kinds of movies. People who love them just can't get enough of them.

AMY: That brings us to today's lost lady who, from 1922 through 1950, wrote wholesome romance novels at the prolific pace of about a book a year. 

KIM: Emilie Loring didn't stop writing until she died, and even then, new titles continue to be published under her name almost every year for two more decades. Why? Because her devoted readers found her work addictive.

AMY: In the same way it's easy to get sucked into a Hallmark movie marathon. Our guest today can help explain this phenomenon. She's read every one of Emilie Loring's works at least 50 times! 

KIM: Woah. Do we need to stage an intervention here? I'm a little worried about her!

AMY: Don't be. An Emilie Loring addiction isn't going to hurt anyone. As today's guest writes in her 2023 biography of the author, "An Emilie Loring book is like a cardigan sweater; classic, comfortable, never too much or too little. Not a trendsetter, but somehow always just right." 

KIM: Listeners, are you ready to fall hopelessly in love with Emilie Loring? Then let's raid the stacks and get started. 

[intro music plays]

AMY: Our guest today, Patti Bender, is a former professor of kinesiology who has spent the last 30 years working in altogether different muscle, researching the life and works of Emilie Loring. This labor of love culminated last year in her published work, Happy Landings: Emilie Loring's Life, Writing and Wisdom, and I think it's safe to describe her as the world's foremost authority on Emilie Loring. Patti, welcome to the show!

PATTI: Thanks. I've been looking forward to this. Thanks for having me. 

KIM: So great to have you on. So the origin of this biography goes back 30 years, which is incredible, but your interest in Emilie Loring goes back even farther. Do you want to tell our listeners how you first came to know her? 

PATTI: Sure. My father and my sister and I were on a train going from Chicago to Arizona back home from my grandma's house, and I was reading Little Dot and Casper comic books and I ran out of them. And so my older sister had a book, it was an Emilie Loring book, and it didn't have any pictures, but I read it anyway. And I read that one, the first one, and then I just kept reading them. I had three older sisters. Every summer my grandma would make us rest after lunch and we would read books. So we'd get a handful of Emilie Loring's, and each of us would read all of them. But then I kept reading them, and I read them all every year and more were coming out. At this time I thought they were new; I didn't realize they were being re-released. So I just read them until I'd read them over, well, now well over 50 times each. And I had no intention of writing a biography, but I got curious about who Emilie was, and there was nothing written about her, really, except that she was born in 1866, which all of a sudden I thought, “Oh my gosh, she was an old lady!” And I couldn't believe that. So I still didn't think I was gonna write a biography until I met the Loring grandchildren. They started sharing more information, and pretty soon I had 5,000 pages on the woman, of original research. And, um, what do you do with that? You write a book.

KIM: That's amazing. Can I just add that I still remember the first book that I read as a child that wasn't for kids. I think you don't forget that. 

PATTI: That's right. 

KIM: Like, it makes such an impact on you, at least for me it did as well. So I completely understand how that would have grabbed your attention from the get go.

PATTI: Oh, sure, because I was reading little girl stuff and now I was reading like my sister's stuff. It was a big deal. 

AMY: I thought it was really interesting that she didn't even start publishing novels until she was 55 years old. And I know you remarked on that in your biography, that you hadn't imagined someone that old writing these books.

 PATTI: I know, and she was in her eighties when she wrote her last one, and yet everyone's so youthful. I think there's some wisdom in that for everyone. She kept that interest and vivacity throughout. 

AMY: She had a quote about that herself too. She said "Old age is merely life into which you put no enthusiasm."

PATTI: Right. "For enthusiasm is the fountain of youth."

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But despite getting a late start as a writer, she actually came from a family with a rich history in publishing, right?

PATTI: So her grandfather was an original founder of The Boston Herald. And then her father was really the biggest influence. He was a publisher with Lee and Shepard Publishing. They specialized in sets of classic works and also in children's books. And in his spare time, he wrote 78 plays. He's still the best selling amateur dramatist of all time. 

AMY: What?!

PATTI: Which I think is amazing. Yeah. His “Among the Breakers” still has sold more than “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” and nobody's ever heard of it. 

AMY: No. Or, or really of him. Yeah. 

PATTI: Yeah. And so, yeah, he deserves a book. But, um, Emilie used to go to work with him, and they'd bring children's books to her and she would say, "No, I don't like this one,” or “I like this one." And they would listen to her, because they wanted to appeal to children, right? So I think that's a really important thing. She always had books, books, books, and she was always listened to. This wasn't a girl who grew up in the Victorian times with being told to shush. She was put up on the desk and asked for her opinion. So she grew up in an environment that cared about what kids read, and that was great preparation for later.

AMY: Didn't her dad publish the first Alice in Wonderland edition? 

PATTI: He did, in the United States. He was responsible for the first, um, American edition of Alice in Wonderland. He did so many remarkable things. He was incredibly prolific. I don't know how anyone could do all the things that he did. 

AMY: For sure. And he was pretty chummy with Mark Twain. I mean, he was a big deal!

PATTI: He was.

AMY: But also he's such a good guy. He's such a good husband, he's such a good father. Around the house, the whole clan, they put on little plays because he's inspiring them creatively. It just seemed like such a fun family to be in.

PATTI: They'd take all the furniture out of the parlor and set up stages, and people would come in, and famous actors and famous authors were coming to their house and acting out plays. And every Christmas morning they acted out a play. And she said, you know, “I felt so sorry for children who didn't act in a play on Christmas.” He was the bright light in the middle of all of them and permanently influenced his children.

AMY: And not just Emilie, because her two siblings, their writing careers took off long before hers did, right? Her sister was a playwright. 

PATTI: Right. So her sister wrote suffragist plays and her brother wrote a few plays, but then he wrote for vaudeville and was tremendously successful there. And then he started writing musical comedies for the stage, and then he ended up writing for the silent film industry. And then his son became a famous script writer in the thirties and forties. So they were just a tremendously creative and prolific bunch. 

KIM: Okay, so normally we wouldn't have one of our early questions be about an author's marriage, but in this case, Emilie Loring was actually a traditional wife and mother a long time before she became a writer. She married attorney and aspiring politician Victor Loring when she was… how old was she when she got married? 

PATTI: Well, she was 25 when she got married, 24 when she met him, and he was 32. And in her books, the girls are 24, 25, and the guys are 32. Like, almost uniformly. There are about three exceptions, I think. I will push back just a little bit on the “traditional” part, because she did other creative things before coming to writing. So she was a photographer, an arts and crafts artist, a metal worker, she was a gardener, she designed a home, she did interior design. She was really busy, just not writing. 

KIM: Right. She was always creative on some level it sounds like. 

AMY: And like her father, her husband, Victor, also seems like a really great guy. It seems like she has great men in her life.

PATTI: She does. And the nice thing about that is in her book, she's not having to fight for dignity or fight for recognition. She assumes she's going to have it, and she has that, do you know what I mean? That's a nice thing about reading her books is that, um, internalizing that as a girl, I felt the same way. You know, it wasn't something she had to fight for. But Victor, I think of him as being steady and she was vivacious. So that was the kind chemistry that they had. 

KIM: I love his name. It sounds like a hero from a soap opera or something. “Victor Loring!”

AMY: It does!

PATTI: I know. 

KIM: Right. 

PATTI: Yeah. 

AMY: And he's the one that really prompted Emilie to go for it in terms of her writing career, right?

PATTI: Yeah, I mean she gave him credit for saying, you know, “You've wanted to write, go ahead and write. Give it a whirl.” And actually, he wrote a short story himself, which I have never been able to find. Help me find it. It's in Snappy Stories. I know which issue, I can't find anyone who has it, but Snappy Stories was a sort of a racy men's story magazine, and I would love to see what Victor had written. Um, but he wrote one story and then she took off and wrote. I would love to imagine that they had a conversation like, “Well, I did it. Come on.”

AMY: Yeah. He didn't just tolerate it, he's like, "I think you should do this. You're good." And I loved reading about Emilie's process for sending out pitches because it was almost like mechanical. Like, she was a machine, and it's a numbers game and you just keep sending pitches. She kept like a chart of her rejections…

PATTI: Yes. She kept them on cards and she would write the day that she began each story, you know, "Commenced this story," and then she'd say, "Finished, sent to this place," and then she'd start, "Commence this one." And then if the first one's rejection came back, that very day, if it was smudged at all, she retyped it, put it in a clean envelope and sent it out.

AMY: I would sit and be wallowing for at least a week or two and telling myself how bad it must be. 

PATTI: She just kept it moving. She was writing, she was sending, she was writing, she was sending. Her first book returned 44 times before she finally got an acceptance. You know, I think I would have given up. 

KIM: I have given up! 

PATTI: She was not gonna give up. Well, it's soul sucking, right? You know, it just takes all the strength from you when you work really hard and you try that you submit it it's like, "No, not interested." 

AMY: But she also took their notes into consideration as well, and she'd be like, “Okay, they gave me some feedback. Let me work on it. Let me switch it up a little bit and then send it out again.”

PATTI: That was an advantage she had growing up as she did, because she'd seen her father work. She'd seen him work with other authors. She'd watched her siblings work. And so she knew this was a craft that had to be honed. This was a skill to be created, not just an inspiration and a talent. And she took that very seriously. 

AMY: So, she had a lot of examples in her life of healthy and happy marital relationships. Her parents had a great marriage. She had a great marriage. Um, talk a little bit about some of the classic characteristics, I guess, of an Emilie Loring romance.

PATTI: Yeah. So, something happens right away. When you open the book, there's gonna be something right away. In Uncharted Seas, the very first thing is, " Step quick, lady, step quick.” So a dramatic start. There are two educated, independent characters who have separate goals. That's the guy and the gal. And there's a mystery that brings them together. The mystery often takes place in his life, but doesn't have to. There's humorous dialogue. There are charming surroundings, uh, there are cultured references. And then there's a theme that's usually expressed in the title. So Uncharted Seas, you know, it's about sending yourself into the unknown, into places where there's uncertainty, and finding romance in that. Finding new vistas, strengthening your character. So those are the things that are in all of them. The plots are quite different. You couldn't play “Emilie Loring Bingo.” There are some things that if you are paying attention, then you know that she's going to mention Alice in Wonderland in each one. And then this is the first book where she wrote “Happy Landings.” A horse is named Happy Landings, and from this book on, somewhere in the book she puts that. So those are some nods, just little things she slipped in for herself.

KIM: I think this is a good time to start talking about Uncharted Seas, our book for today. So Patti, do you want to set the stage for the story? And also tell us about some elements from this novel that are lifted from Emilie's real life. 

PATTI: Sure. So the character in this book, Sandra Duvall, is a girl on her own, and she goes to her father's friend and he gets her a job as a two secretary to a woman in the horse racing set. When she goes out there, there are two men, Nicholas Hoyt and Philippe Rousseau. They're both claimants to this same estate. Their horses are about to compete in a big race, and they're both interested in Sandra. But is Philippe who he really says he is? And who's on whose side at Seven Chimneys? So those are the conflicts, and Seven Chimneys is a real place. These are places that are in Blue Hill, Maine, where she had her summer cottage. Uh, Stone House was Emilie's actual house in Blue Hill. That still exists today, and it does have a ghost. There are lots of stories about the ghost at Stone House. 

AMY: Okay, so we've got Sandra Duvall. She has just landed a new job as a secretary at this very nice house, Seven Chimneys. But as you said, Patti, this first chapter just kind of ropes you in right away because we learned that her employer is temperamental, who's prone to maybe throwing some tantrums. We start in that chapter with an admonition to Sandra, not to, was it not to fall in love? 

PATTI: Not to fall in love with her employer's husband. 

KIM: Husband. Yeah. But she thinks at first that it's the son, because he's younger than her.

PATTI: Right. Right. 

AMY: I liken it to all the best bits of a soap opera, but with much better writing, you know? 

KIM: I totally can picture it as a movie the entire time. 

PATTI: I know. I often think about the different actresses that I would like to see play these parts. And it makes so much sense because with her dramatic background, you can imagine these things being spoken and played. First scene, after she's gotten the job, when she arrives in the town, she comes to the train station and she's waiting for her ride. And a fellow comes and loads up a saddle and she says, “I'm here!” She thinks it's her ride. He says, “Yes, Miss. I see you.” And she thinks, “Oh gosh, you must be a groom or a workman.” But she inveigles him to take her to Seven Chimneys. And unbeknownst to her, this is Nicholas Hoyt. This is the heir, one of the people who claims the estate. From the very beginning, she's attracted to him, but she thinks he's down on his luck, and she's sort of, you know, she's amused that he's playing a part, but she doesn't know what part. 

AMY: It's that classic where it's like…

KIM: Mistaken identity. Yeah, 

AMY: Exactly. But then she kind of knows that he's not who he says he is. So there's like, friction. 

PATTI: Mm-hmm. But she's wrong about who she thinks he is. 

AMY: And it's not only that sort of like Darcy/Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice vibe going back-and-forth between them, but also that is a very classic Hallmark start to a relationship with the mistaken identity and this sort of thing. 

PATTI: Sure. And and the thing that is interesting is that she doesn't think she's supposed to like him, you know. She can't help herself. She does like him.

AMY: Yeah. And there is this other romantic rival, I guess you would say, he is kind of like the Willoughby in Pride and Prejudice, where, you know, Sandra's taking his side and then eventually comes to realize like, "Oh wait, he's the cad," you know?

PATTI: She's never really attracted to Philippe, but they're not sure whether he's the true heir or not. And that's the big mystery is, you know, who's going to inherit this big estate? 

AMY: You mentioned also that Emilie Loring was really into interior design, and you see that so much in this book. I don't know if all of the novels have these lush settings, but the way she describes, well, first of all, Seven Chimneys is an amazing mansion on an amazing property. So you're already like, Yeah, I can settle into this world for sure. 

KIM: Oh yeah, Absolutely.

PATTI: And they're always accurate for the time periods. I have the Pantone color book that looks at all the colors for the different eras, and I'm always looking up and going, “Oh yes, there she is with the turquoise and the apricot.” Emilie went to fashion shows all the time. She loved fashion. And so the women's gowns are always just right, and the hems go up and down with the times and, they're Paris designs. Yeah, clothing and the places are always beautiful. People sometimes criticized her for having such fancy surroundings, and first of all, that's what she knew. And second of all, uh, she said, “I spend, you know, the better part of a year inside this book that I'm creating. I like charming surroundings!” 

KIM: It's like Philadelphia Story or something like that. I love the setting and getting to live in that world. I ate it up, like, I was completely into it and I could not put it down. 

AMY: Didn't she say at one point, “I write the things that I want?” 

PATTI: She gives a couple of examples. There had been a red hat that she had wanted and, um, so she wrote it into her next book. And when people couldn't travel for a while during the war years, then she would give herself a trip. She wrote a whole story about going to England because she couldn't go. So she gave herself that treat.

AMY: But so much of what she wrote was about things that she had experienced, right? Like going to Alaska, she turned that into a novel. I love the story from your biography about, uh, she wrote a whole book based on an advertisement about a lost shoe, like a lost and found? 

PATTI: That's right. Yeah. The actual, um, clipping is in her archives at Boston University. It's just this little clipping she'd cut out and then years later she wrote the book. I mean, it was honestly years later before that happened, but it just said, you know, "Found: black slipper with a buckle." She just wove that into the whole beginning of a story.

KIM: I love her.

PATTI: Well, I do too! And it, it reminds you of, you know, just give me a start to a story. Okay. Here's a black slipper, make something out of it. And all of a sudden she's in…

KIM: Yeah, a writing prompt.

PATTI: Right. And now, all of a sudden she's in Alaska. And, um, so yeah, it didn't take much to get those going. And the thing that was fun for her was that she didn't know what was coming, either. So she used to say that she'd sit down with her two dozen sharpened pencils, and then she would start to write, and she never knew what was going to happen. And that was some of the excitement of writing for her. She would set up the situation, set up the theme, set up the characters, then find out what they were gonna do.

AMY: Um, the world of thoroughbred horse racing is really well delineated in this novel too. I'm usually not a horse literature person. Like, I didn't like National Velvet, I didn't like Black Beauty, all that kind of stuff. 

KIM: You didn't like Black Beauty?!

AMY: Well, that's, yeah, a whole other episode. But I mean, when she sets the stage for that horse race, it really comes alive. The muscles rippling in the horse's legs. The spectators in the crowd. It's the most dramatic portion of the book really, the stakes are so high. But yeah, I thought she did a great job with that.

KIM: It brought a lot action and activeness or into the novel, having that setting and the passion and obsession everyone had with the horses, and which horse was gonna win and everything. That was a pretty good device.

AMY: Alright. So this book has all kinds of twists and turns. It has the mystery element, which we haven't even really gotten into, but maybe we should just leave that for people that want to read and find out how that all comes about. There's a little bit of tragedy in it. Again, no teasers, um, for the most part, there's something cozy about it, right? I don't know if it's the setting or the time period, the romance… it makes me think about the time period that Emilie was living through, which was kind of fraught. You know, you have a couple of world wars, the Great Depression. Were people craving books like this because it was an escape? Did people find her brand of storytelling too cheery? You know, obviously people liked them, but…

PATTI: She was very popular. And, like she says in this book, Sandra Duvall observes and says, “Reading always closed the door on problems for her.” And Emilie wrote to entertain, and I think that she saw these kinds of books as an absolute need. Think about when we're at war and the USO goes over to entertain the troops. What do they do? Do they show them [Saving] Private Ryan? No. You know, they go over with something that's cheerful. And Little Orphan Annie came out the same year as as, um, the movie, came out the same year as Uncharted Seas. It had a funny ghost in it, too. So the humor and the optimism… Look at the pandemic we've just come through you know? Ted Lasso, here's a story that's about the goodness of people. Things turn out well. People do bad things, but not very bad things. You know, people are basically good. Um, that same kind of antidote, I think is what she was writing. And her thought was that, you know, if you were someone who was just living placid life, not involved with things, maybe you'd need a book to stir you up, make you aware. But if your son, like hers, is carrying ammunition to the fronts in World War I, and at any moment you could find out that he had been blown up the night before, you know if you've already lost your money and you're living hand to mouth, you don't need to be told that there are problems in the world.You have the problems. And so her kind of book is the kind of book that gives you some strength. It has optimism. It takes you away for a while. Gives you that break, gives you the rest you need, and you come back feeling a little stronger, a little better, a little better prepared. I think she saw that these were essential kinds of writings for people. And, during the Depression when, uh, publishers were dropping authors left and right because, you know, people were buying fewer books, they kept Emilie Loring on. 

AMY: And she wasn't turning a blind eye to anything in the world, right? Her books actually mention the first world war. I think that comes up in this book; She sees the veterans being helped into the stands at the horse race. She does acknowledge what's going on culturally. 

PATTI: Of course, and the men have typically served in wars, almost all of them have. And each of her books is set in the year in which it was written. And so if you read them in order, you can read the history of the United States from 1922 to 1950. And the events in each one are real events. So if she mentions a concert in New York, that concert actually happened, and they play what she said they played. So if you were reading her books as she was writing them, those references meant a lot to you because you knew what they she was talking about. 

AMY: Okay, so Uncharted Seas was her ninth novel, but her various publishers were racing to get these books out, as you said. Just as fast as she could turn out manuscripts, they would publish them. So she would go on to write 21 more titles until her death in 1951, but then, Patti, explain: more titles kept coming out.

PATTI: Sure. They were a little silent about her death because her sales and the royalties were so good. And so they hired a ghostwriter to flesh out some of her serials and make some more books. Then they started cobbling together short stories of hers, and I know that I can pick out: “Here's some Emilie writing… oops, here goes the ghostwriter again. Nope. Here's Emilie again.” Because the writing's different. You know, it comes from someone's soul. You can't have a formula that makes you be another person. Um, and so they wrote 20 more, and they re-released her original 30. So in Sixties and Seventies, then, they were having new books come out as well as re-releasing the ones that I thought were brand new. And the strategy worked because in the Sixties and Seventies, Emilie's book sold over 37 million copies.

AMY: Wow!

PATTI: Thirty-seven million! They really wanted those royalties to continue. Emilie was earning the equivalent of $300,000 a year toward the end of her career, and the royalties were keeping her sons, who were not particularly wealthy, was keeping them in the places where they lived.So it was important to the families.

KIM: Okay. So that's a lot of books. Um, if you were going to steer us toward a particular one to read next, I know it's probably hard… is it hard to pick? What would you say? 

PATTI: Of course it is. Well, never hard in the moment because, you know, like you stand in front of a bakery case you go, oh, I want that one! But tomorrow it's gonna be a different one. Um, I would say, Here Comes the Sun or Hilltops Clear. Both of those take place…she wrote eight of them that took place in Blue Hill. Both of those do. Writers might enjoy reading. Give Me One Summer, which is about a fledgling writer, and then reading Beckoning Trails, which is about a famous writer. So Emilie wrote about herself, actual things from her life as a writer. So Give Me One Summer and Beckoning Trails, if you were a writer and wanted to kind of put yourself into a romance, those would be the two I’d suggest.

KIM: Oh, that sounds really fun. 

AMY: Didn't you say in your book also that, the title Fair Tomorrow would maybe be the one that most closely hews to her own love story with Victor?

PATTI: Yes. That's the one that I think because it takes place where she and Victor probably began their romance. I think it's the closest to her real romance with Victor. Some of my favorite scenes are in that book. Um, so sometimes if I don't want to read the whole book, I just go from scene to scene in my favorite places. And Fair Tomorrow has some of those.

KIM: What about Hollywood? Did anyone come calling? 

PATTI: She tried. She only tried a little bit, and I don't think she pushed at it very much. I just, they're so in the vein of It Happened One Night or Philadelphia Story. if you know those movies, that's what these books are like. 

KIM: Absolutely. 

AMY: Yeah, anybody that is like a fan of Turner Classic Movies and that sort of “Old Hollywood” vein are gonna love Emilie Loring.

KIM: I completely agree with that. Yep.

PATTI: Right. I think that's where she belongs. The nature of her books. 

AMY: I was a little surprised to read in your book that she got nominated for a Pulitzer Prize actually in 1937. And Margaret Mitchell wound up winning that year for Gone With the Wind, but, you know, we kind of think of Pulitzer Prize winners as you know, going back to the, like, saying very deep and important things about the state of the world, so I'm surprised that her books would have been considered. 

PATTI: Well, a nomination isn't an award…

AMY: …but what did they make of her books? Like, serious critics?

PATTI: That kind of comes in two different parts. One is, did she do what she did well? Yes. So the critics call her books, “well crafted, intelligent, entertaining.” Did they admire what she was doing? No, they did not. Quote, “It is simply an entertaining mystery romance.” Oh, well, I mean, that's all it is, you know.

KIM: Yeah. I mean, given what we talked about, about how, you know, popular she was and it was that comfort food that you can escape for a while. I wonder if that was the thinking for the nomination. It's like she was doing a service in a way, right? 

PATTI: Those awards go to books that move the needle politically or socially in some way. And she wasn't trying to move the needle. She was trying to entertain people. it's just such a different thing. And it's good company though. You think about romantic comedies in the movies, since we've been talking about it. In the history of the Oscars, only two romantic comedies have ever won Best Picture. One was It Happened One Night in 1934. The other one was, um, Shakespeare in Love in 1998. That's it. Dorothea Lawrence Mann said, um, “Should the vast hoard of readers go on admiring realism and loving romance.” The Pulitzer or the Oscars are looking for those ones that societally move the needle, and ones that merely entertain people, merely make them happy, you know, that's considered fluff. And I hope at some point a comedy could make it. I hope that romantic comedies would get more interest. Look at Barbie this year, right? 

KIM: Yeah, 

PATTI: It was passed over for Best Picture…

KIM: Because it's fun. It's fun, it's light, even though it's feminist. 

PATTI: Emilie's in good company, being overlooked. 

AMY: Yeah. 

PATTI: And Sarah Ware Bassett had said something, I'm paraphrasing, but she said, you know what? I don't know why a story about a good person should be seen as idealism and about a bad person being realism. 

AMY: Yeah. Who are you hanging out with, right? Because my friends are all nice people.

PATTI: Exactly. And Emilie had said, you know, “the beautiful things in life are just as real as the ugly things in life.” But if you go into the awful bowels of despair, you know, that's considered more worthwhile. 

KIM: Yeah. And she was writing about what she knew, like we said, because she had a long and mostly really happy life.

AMY: This is, um, kind of jumping back in time, but I realized, we didn't give you an opportunity. Did you wanna read any section from Uncharted Seas? 

PATTI: I marked one. Her father's friend, the one who gets her the job, is talking about dreams. And, Nicholas Hoyt says that “dreams are an extravagant indulgence.” And, um, Damon says, “Indulgence? How do you get that way, Nick? Dreams are the source of much of the new thinking, new convictions, new power in the world. They send the adventurous out on uncharted seas, dangerous seas, and its danger, not security, which develops strength in mind and spirit. No, I wouldn't say that dreaming was an extravagance. I'd list it under the head of a non-taxable necessity.” And then Sandra speaks up and says, “I've had that ‘uncharted seas’ idea myself, but why think of those seas entirely in terms of danger and treacherous reefs and sinister whirlpools? I'm perched on the lookout spying for goodwill ships and treasure islands and priceless friends and lovely summer seas with just enough squalls to make me appreciate fair weather.” 

AMY: That's a great encapsuling of her of spirit, right? What she thought about life. This morning I was just looking on Goodreads really quick seeing what people had to say about Emilie Loring, and there was one comment that was so short and simple and it just said, “These books bring me comfort.” She’s still, today, she's doing that for people. And just the idea, like you said, when you first discovered her you always knew that there would be another one, another one, another one. I can never really run out, you know? Once you do, you start your journey like Patti to read them 50 times each!

 PATTI: People think that's funny. But I often ask people, “How often have you sung your favorite song?” It's not that you don't know how the song ends or that you don't know how the story ends. It's that you really love the language and love the flow and love the pattern. 

KIM: The feeling it gives you.

PATTI: Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted to share when you were mentioning that, um, online… I have a website and people come there to share about Emilie, and mostly they'll say,” I thought I was the only one who remembered her!” But, um, one said, “I love her language. Her descriptions draw you in.” Another said, “Emilie Loring got me through two graduate degrees in literature, the antidotes to the depressing classics.” And then, um, and then another one said, “I found Emilie Loring when I was 18. I'm now in my eighties and I still enjoy reading them again and again.”

AMY: She's dependable. 

PATTI: She is. She is. 

KIM: Thank you so much, Patti, for introducing us to Emilie Loring, and never give up on your quest to tell her story. We're happy to be part of spreading the word about Emilie Loring and her books and your wonderful biography.

PATTI: Well, thank you so much for having me. This has really been fun. Thanks. 

KIM: That's all for today's episode. Join us back in two weeks when we'll be discussing an Irish writer who earned the nickname, “the national poetess of Ireland.” And oh yeah, she also gave birth to this guy you might have heard of: Oscar Wilde. 

AMY: That's right. Oscar Wilde's mom is a lost lady of lit, you guys! And for those among you who are Patreon members, tune in next week when we'll be playing a fun game of “Whose Line is it Anyway? Elizabeth Taylor versus Elizabeth Taylor.” Yes, we're going to be pitting the actress against the “lost lady of lit” trying to figure out who said what or who wrote what.

KIM: I love our life. Anyway, our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes, and supported by lovely listeners like you!