Like Edith, I was often alone in the house, usually during summer’s endless days of nothing.
But I was haunted by the settings and the scenery, which were oddly still yet kinetic at the same time.
I was raised on the anthropomorphized animal worlds of Beatrix Potter, Rupert Bear, and the Flower Fairies, so it was hardly a stretch for me to imagine this lonely doll leading a sophisticated life in New York, smartly dressed and sitting down to a fancy dinner, or taking the train to the country with plenty of luggage. Dare Wright looked exactly like little Edith. When Drew pointed out the author’s photograph on the book jacket, I got quiet. Why was this little doll knitting a scarf for a stuffed bear? Why did she have to go shopping for the yarn in the city all by herself? Why was her skirt so short, and why was she so frequently photographed from behind? My first flip through the book stirred a sense of strange familiarity-I intuitively understood this peculiar universe, yet it creeped me out and left me wanting to close the book and back away, kind of how I felt as a kid after watching too many Twilight Zone episodes on a Sunday afternoon. But there was also something unsettling about its images of dolls come to life. Like so many children’s books, A Gift From the Lonely Doll was an aching mix of absurd and profound. The story was told via beautiful black-and-white photographs of a curious doll named Edith and her teddy bear friends, Mr. Have you heard of the The Lonely Doll? For my birthday one year, my friend Drew presented me with a reissued copy of A Gift From the Lonely Doll and these solemn words: “You need this book.” It was one in a series by the late photographer/author/model Dare Wright, the first of which was originally published in 1957 with a trademark pink-and-white gingham cover. Collage by Sonja, drawing by Brooke Nechvatel.
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