The Yearling
Cover of original 1938 edition
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| Author | Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Young adult novel |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
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Publication date
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1938 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 416 (Mass Market Paperback) |
| Preceded by | South Moon Under |
| Followed by | Cross Creek |
The Yearling is the 1938 novel written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. It was published in March 1938. It was the main selection of the Book of the Month Club in April 1938. It was the number one best seller for twenty-three consecutive weeks in 1938. As well as being the best-selling novel in America in 1938, it was the seventh-best in 1939. It sold over 250,000 copies in 1938. It has been translated into Spanish, Chinese, French, Japanese, German, Italian, Russian and twenty-two other languages. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1939.
Rawlings's editor was Maxwell Perkins, who also worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and other literary luminaries. She had submitted several projects to Perkins for his review, and he rejected them all. He instructed her to write about what she knew from her own life, and the result of her taking his advice was The Yearling.
Young Jody Baxter lives with his parents, Ora and Ezra "Penny" Baxter, in the animal-filled central Florida backwoods in the 1870s. His parents had six other children prior to Jody, but they died in infancy which makes it difficult for Ma Baxter to bond with him. Jody loves the outdoors and loves his family. He has wanted a pet for as long as he can remember, yet his mother, Ora, says they barely have enough food to feed themselves, let alone a pet.
A subplot involves the hunt for an old bear named Slewfoot that randomly attacks the Baxter livestock. Later the Baxters and Forresters get in a fight about the bear and continue to fight about nearly anything. (While the Forresters are presented as a disreputable clan, the disabled youngest brother, Fodder-Wing, is a close friend to Jody.) The Forresters steal the Baxters' hogs and, while Penny and Jody are out searching for the stolen stock, Penny is bitten in the arm by a rattlesnake. Penny shoots a doe--orphaning its young fawn--in order to use its liver to draw out the snake's venom, which saves Penny's life.
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Wikipedia