I am disgusted by Wikipedia's entry.
Largely because I have been trying to find a book which I think is called Tales of a Persian Grandmother, and Wikipedia gives me only this:
Further reading
Carpenter, Frances. South American Wonder Tales. Chicago: Follett Publishing (1969). ISBN 0695482149
Carpenter, Frances. Tales of a Chinese Grandmother: 30 Traditional Tales from China. Clarendon: Tuttle Publishing (2001). ISBN 0804834091
Carpenter, Frances. Tales of a Korean Grandmother: 32 Traditional Tales from Korea. Clarendon: Tuttle Publishing (1989). ISBN 0804810435
Carpenter, Frances. Tales of a Russian Grandmother. 1933
I am not grateful that this Wikipedia entry offers me access to recent editions. I need a proper bibliography that gives me some sense of how Carpenter's mind was moving as she worked on these different projects.
But, as always, the gifts the Internet has given don't really do anything for us unless someone takes the time to care. Wikipedia tells me this: "She wrote children's books and work about women artists."
Okay. So where is the bibliography of books about the women artists? WHICH women artists?
*******
It's a few hours later, and I have a few more ideas about Ms. Carpenter's writing:
Frances Aretta Carpenter [1890 – 1972]
First (and this is a minor note)--I don't think that the Frances Carpenter who I am interested in wrote the two schoolgirl novel's published by Blackie's in the UK: "The Rebel Schoolgirl" and "Judy of the Circus." Possible? Yes. Likely? No.
Second...Wikipedia's entry (which is the best we have) totally sucks. Smith College's (& I'd hope someone there would care) is worse.
Frances Carpenter lived an extraordinary life in travel and in writing. ​ She graduated from Smith College in 1912, and spent the next eight years collaborating with her father, a noted travel writer, taking photographs and co-writing his books. She married, at thirty, William Chapin Huntington, a career diplomat with whom she traveled all over the world, both for his work--and for hers. They had two children. Frances, under her own name, continued to produce her books. She collected hundreds of folktales from around the world, producing a book a year out of these journeys from 1926 through1969.
And... what good books many of them were. ​ These were folk tales that captured my youthful imagination and made me a reader. Imprinted vividly in my memory is a story about a Persian Princess who was transformed into a beautiful white cat by an evil sorcerer. She was rescued by her beloved--who rubbed her all over with a magic balm. But--he left one small, soft patch of beautiful white fur to remain one of her shoulders. Because--he wanted them to remember the travails they suffered for their love, and to remain grateful. Will the stories be as compelling as I remember? I don't know. But at the time and place in my life that I read them, they opened up my world.
For many years, I had to work to convince myself that these books were not a figment of my imagination. Inter-Library loans were surprisingly unhelpful. But a decade or more passed, and searches on the Internet got stronger (also stranger, but that's another story) Finally, I found the first of the books.
Frances's father died in 1924. It appears that her first books were efforts to complete his unfinished projects. But in 1928, she started producing work for the American Book Company, her father's publisher, in her own right. Tales of a Basque Grandmother, the first of her "Grandmother" books, appeared in 1930. From there forward, she lived for the next forty years an active writing life. I think I have reconstructed the majority of the publications on her booklist (see below). If she did any work on women artists, as Wikipedia claims... well, perhaps it was under her married name.
I am still searching for Tales of a Persian Grandmother. Today, I have begun to convince myself that the story that I'm looking for is probably in Wonder Tales of Dogs & Cats, and my Persian Grandmother collection doesn't exist.
But maybe it *is* out there.
Here's hoping.