author
Barbara Newhall Follett
1914–1939
A child prodigy who published her first novel at just twelve, she remains one of the most haunting figures in American literary history. Her imaginative early books won serious praise, and her unexplained disappearance in 1939 has kept interest in her life alive ever since.
2 Audiobooks
The voyage of the Norman D. : As told by the cabin-boy
by Barbara Newhall Follett
The house without windows & Eepersip's life there
by Barbara Newhall Follett
About the author
Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1914, Barbara Newhall Follett grew up in a bookish household and began writing very young. She was educated largely at home, and her talent appeared early: The House Without Windows was published in 1927 when she was only twelve, introducing readers to a voice that felt unusually vivid, original, and self-assured.
She followed that debut with The Voyage of the Norman D., which was also warmly received, and she was widely seen as an extraordinary young literary talent. Her fiction often drew on nature, travel, and adventure, and even in childhood she wrote with a striking sense of freedom and inward intensity.
Follett's later life was far less secure than her brilliant beginning suggested. She married young, struggled through difficult personal circumstances, and in December 1939 disappeared from Brookline, Massachusetts. She was never found, and that mystery has become part of her legacy, though her writing itself is what continues to draw readers back.