Gertrude Chandler Warner

Gertrude Chandler Warner (April 16, 1890 – August 30, 1979) was an American author, mainly of children's stories. She was most famous for writing the original book of The Boxcar Children and for the next 18 books in the series.

Biography

Warner was born in Putnam, Connecticut, on April 16, 1890, to Edgar Morris Warner and Jane Elizabeth Carpenter Warner. Her family included an older sister, Frances, and a younger brother, John. Her middle name came from her mother's ancestors, the Chandlers, who had settled in nearby Woodstock, Connecticut, in 1686. Warner's father, Edgar, graduated from Harvard Law School in 1872 and practiced law in Putnam. The Warners' house on Main Street was located across from the railroad station.

At age five, Warner dreamed of being an author, and she began writing in 10-cent blank books as soon as she was able to hold a pencil. Warner's first book was an imitation of Florence Kate Upton's Golliwog stories and was titled Golliwog at the Zoo; it "consisted of verses illustrated with watercolors of the two Dutch clocks and the Goliwag. Warner presented this book to her grandfather, and every Christmas afterwards, she would give him a hand-made book as a present.

While growing up, Warner loved to read, and her favorite book was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It included four color illustrations by Dorothy Lake Gregory. In 1942, Warner rewrote the book with a prescribed vocabulary of six hundred words and a text of about 15,000 words, so that it could be used as a children's school reader.

Warner once acknowledged that The Boxcar Children was criticized for depicting children with little parental supervision; her critics thought that this would encourage child rebellion. Her response was, however, that the children liked it for that very reason. In her books, Warner "liked to stress the Aldens' independence and resourcefulness and their solid New England devotion to using up and making do".

Today, Albert Whitman & Company publishes the series of Warner's original 19 stories. Other authors have contributed to the series, adding approximately 150 books to The Boxcar Children series.

In 2020, Gertrude Chandler Warner's The Box-Car Children, the first book in the series, entered the public domain.

Boxcar Children Museum

On July 3, 2004, the Gertrude Chandler Warner Boxcar Children Museum opened in Putnam, Connecticut. It is located across the street from Warner's childhood home and is housed in an authentic 1920s New Haven R.R. boxcar. The museum is dedicated to Warner's life and work, and includes original signed books, photos and artifacts from her life and career as a teacher in Putnam. Included is the desk at which a nine-year-old Warner wrote her first story titled Golliwog at the Zoo. There is also a re-creation of the living space created by the Aldens – the Boxcar Children themselves.