Certainly I would like to be able to walk, but if the good fairy of old stories offered me the one gift, the ability to walk would not be the thing I would ask for. More years with my husband than I may normally expect, the ability to write better--a dozen things--would come before it.
--Dorothy Cottrell
Ever heard of this Australian writer? I hadn't, but she was born 105 years ago today. She used a wheelchair from age 6, after surviving polio.
Cottrell's life story reads like some of the adventures and children's tales she would later write: as a little girl on her uncle's sheep farm near Toowoomba, she taught the sheep and working dogs to pull her wheelchair like a chariot. She also learned to shoot a hunting rifle, and swim, and drive a car. At 20 she married, secretly, and traveled with her bookkeeper husband around Australia. In 1928 the Cottrells moved to California, and in 1942 to Florida. Dorothy wrote popular fiction, which funded her travels, and some of her books were made into movies. It is said that she would hop a ride on any ship that would accept her with her chair, and thus made her way around the Caribbean she loved.
This month, the rare books collection at the Monash University Library has a display on Australian Women Writers, 1900-1950, and Cottrell is among the featured authors.
4 comments:
Fantastic! I'd never heard of her before.
That is a truly beautiful quote. :-)
Dorothy and her husband, Walter, were neighbors of ours when they resided in Homestead, Florida, in the 1950’s. Though I was only 13 at the time—and had no clue of her literary fame—I have many fond memories of Dorothy. Though wheelchair-bound since childhood, she was an accomplished, painter, gardener and sailor, and one of the most cheerful, optimistic persons I’ve ever known. Her husband Walter, or Mac, as we called him (his middle name being MacKenzie) was our Boy Scout master, Troop 14, and a community leader. Should anyone be interested in my recollections of Dorothy and Walter Cottrell in greater detail, please feel free to email me. Perhaps some one will consider writing a research paper or preparing a seminar on Dorothy Cottrell, if hasn’t been done already.
Dorothy and her husband, Walter, were neighbors of ours when they resided in Homestead, Florida, in the 1950’s. Though I was only 13 at the time—and had no clue of her literary fame—I have many fond memories of Dorothy.
If you would like to know more about about Dorothy, please feel free to visit the blog I'm preparing for her --
http://dorothycottrell.blogspot.com
or e-mail me at navarro37@gmaiil.com
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