Writing Biography

A member of a book club that recently read "Frank: The Story of Frances Folsom Cleveland," as its monthly selection (thank you!) asked how I had managed to research and write biography. It is a good question.

Biography is, of course, the story of someone's life. Unlike fiction, in which the author must create every aspect of the novel - plot, characters, actions, motives, setting - biography offers a natural backdrop and a natural order to the organization of the material. You have a person who has been born, had a childhood, formative years, adulthood and, eventually, death. That, at least, makes the organization of the book easy - but finding material, particularly when one is researching an historic figure who was fastidious about concealing her private life, - is the heart of the challenge.

My early research was characterized by a simple timeline - key dates (birth, college years, marriage, etc.) - that was enhanced by noting the names of influential people and historical events associated with those dates. In writing about Frances, I spent untold hours in the Microfilm Division of the Davis Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, poring over the microfilms of the Grover Cleveland papers, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.

A research trip to two key places in Frances' life - Wells College, her alma mater, and the Grover Cleveland Birthplace Museum, in Caldwell, New Jersey - provided access to unique archival material. Inter-library loan enabled me to access additional materials although, to this day, I regret not having found the resources that would have enabled me to spend about a week in the Library of Congress going through the papers of many of Cleveland's cabinet members.

Then there is the pure serendipity of finding interesting little tidbits - a name, a reference, a quote that pops up that makes sense because I've been looking at the larger picture. Those are the gems that are the researcher's equivalent of panning for gold and finding the sought-after nuggets.

"Frank" is the product of many rewrites. The first set of rewrites occurred to prepare the manuscript for initial review; the second rewrite was the result of an honest, and much needed, critique. The challenge, to address the observations of a demanding reviewer (who was on target with the comments), was to demonstrate in the telling of Frances' life that she was not just another Gilded Age matron who did good works because it was expected of one in her social class. The message was clear: if I thought Frances was interesting enough to research and write about, convey to readers that she is worth reading about.

If the feedback I have received from readers is any indication, I succeeded in my task.

Why Write About Frances Folsom Cleveland?

"Why did you pick her?" is a question I am asked nearly every time someone hears about my book, "Frank: The Story of Frances Folsom Cleveland, America's Youngest First Lady." It's a fair question. Frances is not, as one person told me, "in the upper constellation of first ladies": that stratospheric region inhabited by Jackie Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dolley Madison and Abigail Adams. The fact that Frances was considered a hostess on par with Dolley Madison has long been forgotten, and the uncanny parallels with Jackie Kennedy have never been fully drawn.

There are quite a few "firsts" associated with Frances. In addition to being the nation's youngest first lady, she was the first to marry a sitting president in the White House; the first First Lady to give birth to a baby in the White House; and the first to remarry after her husband died (Jackie Kennedy is the only other first lady to do so).

There are the forgotten "firsts": a kindergarten in the White House for preschool children; the first First Lady to graduate from college; one of the first two female trustees of her alma mater, Wells College. Frances played a behind the scenes role in finally getting copyright legislation passed to protect American authors, and following the presidential years and the family's settling in Princeton, New Jersey, Frances was instrumental in the founding of the New Jersey College for Women.

Newspaper articles, as well as her letters, reveal a woman of strong and determined character, with an egalitarian streak that endeared her to the public and to the White House staff. Her husband, Cleveland, who came across in public as gruff and taciturn, actually had a better sense of humor and was an outstanding raconteur in private. Frances, perhaps because of the demands on her to watch her children and household while Cleveland spent hours in the presidential study, in a fishing boat or on a hunting trip, was friendly enough. But she also had a stern and unyielding streak that remained with her throughout her life.

Historians refer to Frances as a "transitional" first lady. Although she continued to maintain a very traditional posture as the White House hostess, she did, in fact, understand the value of parlor politics. She played that game well enough that sometimes even her husband, who believed women should not be in politics, had to support what she was doing.

The Business of Writing

Last Sunday, March 14, I had a small quote in the "Personality Parade" column of Parade magazine. (See http://www.parade.com/celebrity/personality-parade/2010/03/jacqueline-kennedy-onassis.html.) For one day, I made the top 20 U.S. history bestseller list on amazon.com. During that Sunday, I was in the top 4,000 books sold, according to their rankings.On Monday, I was off the bestseller list and I had dropped to 42,000, and now.... Well, we won't go into that, but let's just say you can add a few more zeroes to my place on the sales charts.

There are a lot of books being written, and in spite of the proliferation of the written word - albeit in shortened form, such as texts and tweets (and blog posts) - book reading, in general, is down. Book publishing is not a profitable enterprise. Even the major publishing houses count on blockbusters to pay the bills for all of the other mid-list and less-than-mid-list books they publish. Every author who has a book published is expeced actively to promote his or her work.

This past week, I had the great honor to be on an author panel at the Virginia Festival of the Book. It is an opportunity afforded to only a small number of authors, and I consider myself extremely fortunate to be a part of that select group. This was also the first time that I attended the event as an author - and a different perspective generates a different response to one's experiences.

Not only did I pay attention to what had motivated authors to pick their topics and what was involved in their research, but I especially noted that every single one of us is trying to sell our respective books. We are first selling ourselves, the writer as human being, and in that newly established rapport we seek to sell the prospective reader on the merits of reading our particular book. In the vast collection of potential reading material, we strive to convince a reader that ours is one of the books that merits attention.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to serve as a consultant to a very artistic and business-savvy potter. I marveled at how he successfully operated out of both sides of his brain - the artistic side that created one-of-a-kind wares, and the business side - that understood what it took to sell those wares. I find myself, the MBA who writes history as a hobby, now in that same category - the writer who must also be business-savvy. If I'm going to do the work to research and write a book, then I want people to read what I have written. And if I want people to read what I have written, then I need to find every means possible to let them know about the book - and about me.

That, in short, is the business side of writing.