Her page has a little exclamation point at the top advising readers that the article needs additional citations for verification. I read it with something strange and electric running through me, an itch I can’t explain.
I open an empty document and the cursor blinks at me, an invitation in Morse code. I haven’t written anything except résumés and forgeries in eight years—because Jasper deserves more than make-believe, and because even the Lost Boys had to grow up in the end—but tonight I’m tempted. Maybe it’s the memory of Starling House, vast and ruinous against the winter sky. Maybe it’s the bare facts of E. Starling’s life, a dissatisfying arc that could be fixed in fiction. Maybe it’s the damn dreams.
In the end I only permit myself to copy and paste the Wiki page into the document, telling myself it’s research, before shutting the laptop so firmly that Jasper stirs in his sleep.
E. Starling (author)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eleanor Starling (1851–4 May 1886) was a nineteenth-century American children’s author and illustrator who published under the name of E. Starling. Though initially poorly received, her picture book The Underland enjoyed a twentieth-century revival and is now frequently included in lists of America’s most influential children’s literature.
Biography [edit]
There is no record of Eleanor Starling’s birth.[1] Her first appearance in the historical record is the announcement of her engagement to John Peabody Gravely, founder and co-owner of Gravely Bros. Coal & Power Co. (now Gravely Power).[2] The two were married in 1869, but John Gravely died shortly afterward, leaving the company to his surviving brother, Robert Gravely, and the fortune to his wife.
Starling, who never received formal training in art or literature, submitted the manuscript of The Underland to more than thirty publishers. Julius Donohue of Cox & Donohue recalled receiving a package containing twenty-six illustrations “so amateurish and upsetting” that he hid them in the bottom drawer of his desk and forgot them.[3] Several months later, when his six-year-old daughter begged for “the nightmare book” at bedtime, he realized the pages had been discovered.[3] Cox & Donohue offered Starling a modest contract and published The Underland in the spring of 1881.
Eleanor Starling never met with her editors or readers. She refused all interviews, and all correspondence addressed to her was returned unopened. She was declared dead in 1886. Her work was held in trust until it fell out of copyright in 1956. Her home in Muhlenberg County is marked by the Kentucky State Historical Society.
Critical Reception [edit]
The Underland was considered both a critical and commercial failure upon publication. A reviewer for the Boston Times described it as “deliberately unsettling” and “a transparent theft from Mr. Carroll,”[4] while the Christian Children’s Union petitioned several state governments to ban the book for the promotion of immorality. Donohue defended it in an open letter, asking how a book could be immoral when it contained no nudity, violence, sex, alcohol, or profanity. In response the Children’s Union cited the “horrific anatomy” of the Beasts of Underland and the “general aura of dread.”[5]
The book developed a quiet following over subsequent decades. By the early 1900s a number of artists and writers were citing E. Starling as an early influence.[6] Her artwork, initially dismissed as clumsy and untrained, was lauded for its stark composition and intensity of emotion. Her sparsely told tale, which described a little girl named Nora Lee who fell into “Underland,” was recognized for its engagement with themes of fear, isolation, and monstrosity.
Since then Underland has gained acclaim as an early work in the neo-Gothic and modernist movements, and is considered a cultural turning point when children’s literature abandoned the strict moral clarity of the nineteenth century for darker, more ambiguous themes.[6] Director Guillermo del Toro has praised E. Starling’s work, and thanked her for teaching him that “the purpose of fantasy is not to make the world prettier, but to lay it bare.”[7]
Adaptations and Related Works [edit]
The Underland was adapted as a stage play of the same name in 1932 at the Public Theater in New York City, and revived in 1944 and again in 1959. The 1959 production ended after only three nights, and was the subject of a House Un-American Activities Committee report citing its “hostility to American values, traditional family structures, and commerce.”
The Underland was produced as a feature film in 1983, but never released. A documentary about the filming of the movie, Unearthing Underland, was nominated for an IDA Award in 2000.
In 2003, the song “Nora Lee & Me” was produced as a hidden track on Josh Ritter’s third studio album, Hello Starling. The bluegrass girl group the Common Wealth also cites the book as an influence on their 2008 alt-country album, follow them down.
The book was adapted as a serialized graphic novel in the 2010s.
The Norman Rockwell Museum organized an art exhibition in 2015 titled Starling’s Heirs: A History of Dark Fantasy Illustration, which included works by Rovina Cai, Brom, and Jenna Barton.
Further Reading [edit]
??Mandelo, L. (1996). “Beastly Appetites: Queer Monstrosity in E. Starling’s Text.” In The Southern Gothic Critical Reader. Salem Press.
??Liddell, Dr. A. (2016). “From Wonderland to Underland: White Femininity and the Politics of Escape.” American Literary History. 24 (3): 221–234.
??Atwood, N. (2002). Gothic Children’s Illustration from Starling to Burton. Houghton Mifflin.
FIVE
I don’t dream of the house that night. I don’t dream at all, actually, which is weird for me; I often wake up with the taste of river water and blood in my mouth, broken glass in my hair, a scream drowning in my chest. But that morning, the first one after I set foot on Starling land, there’s nothing but a deep quiet inside me, like the dead air between radio stations.
The gates of Starling House greet me with their empty iron eyes. My left hand aches, but this time I have the key strung around my neck on a red lanyard. The thunk of tumblers turning feels more dramatic than it is, a tectonic shifting I can feel through my shoes, and then I’m walking up the drive with the key knocking against my breastbone.
Starling House still looks like God scooped it up from the cover of a Gothic novel and dropped it on the banks of the Mud River, and I still like it far more than I should. I pretend the busted windowpanes are jagged little mouths, grinning at me.
Arthur Starling answers the door in a rumpled sweater that doesn’t fit, his eyes the resentful red of someone who does not appreciate being conscious before noon.
I give him several thousand watts of cheery smile and a merciless “Good morning!” I squint up at the sun, gleaming reluctantly through the branches. “You said anytime after dawn was fine.”
His eyes narrow to bitter slits.
“Can I come in? Where should I start?”
He closes his eyes completely, as if he is preventing himself from slamming the door in my face only through devout prayer, and steps aside.
Walking across the threshold of Starling House is like stepping from winter straight into summer: the air is sweet and rich and warm. It slides down my throat, goes straight to my head. The walls seem to lean toward me. My feet feel rooted in place—I have a vision of vines pushing up between the floorboards to twine around my ankles, nails driving up through the soft flesh of my feet—
The door snaps shut behind me, sharp as a slap. The walls straighten up.
I turn to see Arthur watching me from the dimness, his expression flat and unreadable, his palm flat on the door. This side is carved up just like the outside, except the neat rows of signs and symbols have been interrupted by a random crosshatch of deep, ragged lines, almost like claw marks.