living doll; Behind a much-loved children's book lies a tale stranger than fiction.('The Lonely Doll')(Children's Review)(Book Review)

Byline: Stacey D'erasmo

Entrance to the magical kingdom apparently comes at quite a price. When journalist Jean Nathan began, a bit casually, her search for the writer of The Lonely Doll, the best-selling children's book, she discovered a life so strange, sad, and discomfiting that it is perhaps bearable only as a fairy tale. Author Dare Wright's debut, published in 1957, is the story of a triste doll named Edith, in a gingham dress and hoop earrings, who romps with two teddy bears-Mr. Bear and Little Bear-playing dress-up with Little Bear until Mr. Bear discovers them and spanks Edith, and they all live happily ever after. The story is compelling, not least because the illustrations are Wright's photographs of an actual doll and two teddy bears, in various poses. They show Edith, with her peculiarly grown-up face, in high heels, and Edith bending over to be spanked by Mr. Bear. Nothing about this, apparently, was odd to the legions of little girls (including me) who adored the book, but adults might well wonder what sort of mixed-species menage this is, exactly.

The story of Wright's life is odder still. Born in 1914 to a mother, Edie, who was having much more success as a portrait painter than in her marriage to a mostly absent, alcoholic husband, Dare quickly became her mother's muse, protegee, beloved, alter ego, and psychological victim. The tie between them, as they traipsed together from town to town and in and out of financial straits, became so thick and, frankly, creepy that incestuous seems like too imprecise a term for it. Edie, greedily, could never get enough of Dare-ever. The two were inseparable, in every sense. Edie painted the child Dare's portrait over and over; later, when Dare was an adult and a semi-aspiring model and photographer, she and her mother collaborated on nude photos of Dare; later still, ...