A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter

I know I wrote this up back early in the week when I finished it. Must have been Tuesday - after Body Work and before The Running Man. I remember distinctly because I included a couple of links - I guess I must have been more tired than I thought and forgot to push the "publish post" button after I previewed it. Trust me on the timing, it did NOT take me six days to read The Running Man! If it had, I would never consider it for a developmental English novel.

So, about A Girl of the Limberlost, it was one of my mother's favorite books when she was a girl and she encouraged all of us to read it - and a pack of others by Porter. I did read it, I can't answer for my sisters, but that was many and many a year ago. I quite enjoyed it this time, too, although I don't think I read and reread it as Mother did.

The girl, Elnora, lives on the edge of the Limberlost, which is a real swamp (or was) somewhere in Indiana. She was a country girl and caught and mounted moths to pay her way through high school. The author was a naturalist and the natural history included is quite authentic. In the book, Elnora desperately needs a particular moth, an imperialis, to complete a collection which would finance her first year in college. This moth is so beautiful that in the story a ball gown is made with the moth as inspiration.

There is a lot of discussion of the particularly beautiful large moths, which include the luna moth (which haunts those sleep-aid commercials). We used to see lunas around the trailer we worked in down at the tox lab in central Arkansas. There was another very large moth that we saw as well, and I wondered if that was perhaps it was the imperialis. Naturally, I opened a browser window and googled images for "moth imperialis." As I expected, there were any number of pictures of the moth (not the one we used to see). What I did not expect was a picture of a ball gown. It wasn't the gown from the story, which I don't suppose was ever actually made, this one was based on the luna moth - but there was a reference to the story. The designer explained her reasons for choosing the luna for her inspiration rather that the imperialis as in A Girl of the Limberlost. So (maybe this is why I forgot to publish my post) I spent some time poking around her website. It is fascinating; she is a textile and costume historian and does meticulous reproductions of historical costumes as well as original design work. In case anyone is interested, her URL is http://thedreamstress.com/. If you want to see the luna gown: http://thedreamstress.com/category/costume/luna-moth-gown/.

And besides all that, I did enjoy the book very much. It is definitely old fashioned and perhaps a little too sweet sometimes, but it isn't as ponderous a read as much of the literature of the period. And they all lived happily ever after - and sometimes that is really very nice.