You would think if you were famous enough to have at least two short story collections and three other novels published and be hailed in The Bookman as "a writer who has something new and fresh to tell" you would be remembered by English majors less than 100 years later. But I have never heard of her.
Three of her books are available full text at Google Books. AT THE ACTORS' BOARDINGHOUSE, THE MAISONE DE SHINE: MORE STORIES OF THE ACTORS' BOARDING HOUSE, and MR. JACKSON. They are all written in dialect with trendy slang which make them virtually incomprehensible today. I suppose I could try. In his glowing review of At the Actors' Boardinghouse in Bookman, Arthur Bartlett Maurice gives a list of a few of the short stories that are "must reads" and if I fall further down the Helen Green wormhole, I just may give them a shot.
And she wasn’t just some unsuccessful person who fell by the wayside. AT THE ACTORS’ BOARDINGHOUSE was originally published in The Morning Telegraph. At least they held the copyright in 1905. But Helen owned it in 1906 when the book was published by the Nevada Publishing Company in New York. And then Brentano’s published another edition in 1907!
And look at this biographical information! In the words of the glorious Scott Thompson, "It sounds like utter bullshit to me..." (I'm also having a hard time piecing together this sloppy narrative.) I really want to learn more about this woman!
Things I need to research - The New York Morning Telegraph, Bookman’s Magazine and the rest of the Female Humorists in the article I found in a Good Housekeeping magazine my friend Lady Char loaned me from January 1910. I only read it because it had a picture of Jean Webster in it, who I adore, but there was nothing in the article about her! Good Housekeeping is really pulling the old bait and switch...
I am trying to post something every day, but I keep having to do other things! And I have so many books to read and I just got Laura Amy Schlitz's THE HIRED GIRL. So I am going to read that for a half hour right now. I plan to fall completely in love.
The Bookman: A Magazine of Literature and Life, March, 1908.
Green, Helen. The Maison de Shine: More Stories of the Actor's Boardinghouse. New York: B.W. Dodge and Company, 1908.
Maurice, Arthur Bartlett. "Feminine Humorists." Good Housekeeping, January 1910.
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