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Wikipedia.org's article on Alice Dalgliesh - a loud harrumph from an AFHer
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Vance Frickey
Feb 25, 2015, 3:28:30 PM2/25/15
to
This really shouldn't be surprising, but the Wikipedia.org article "Alice Dalgliesh" painted a glowing picture of her as "a pioneer in the field of children's historical fiction." Before today, that view was almost completely unbalanced by the saga of her editorial conflicts with Robert Heinlein while his juvenile novels were published by Scribners.
The ONLY reference to her work with Robert Heinlein before I edited the article (I've been a wikipedia.org editor since at least 2008 - I remember contributing earlier but the record doesn't show them now):
"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). She is reported to have argued with him about the books they worked on together. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
Does anyone else here think that's just a BIT skimpy and charitable to Dalgleish, given Heinlein's correspondence on the subject of Dalgleish to his agent Lurton Blassingame?
Anyone who's really read Grumbles From the Grave knows this is a very rosy portrait of Alice Dalgleish's interactions with Robert Heinlein while he wrote for Scribners - a period running, from the dates in Grumbles, from 1948 (Space Cadet) to 1959 (when Scribners rejected Starship Troopers and Heinlein took it to Putnam, where it was published and won that year's Hugo).
So (action: modest cough) I edited the article to provide that balanced viewpoint on which wikipedia.org prides itself:
I edited the offending paragraph to be a little closer to reality:
"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). Robert Heinlein's correspondence (posthumously edited and published at his bequest by his wife Virginia Heinlein as Grumbles from the Grave) describes extensively and at length - in over two chapters of the book - changes Dalgliesh requested to Heinlein's books for Scribners to which Heinlein objected strongly. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
Then, after a paragraph in which another editor said (among other harrumph-provoking things)
"Francis Felsen, who worked under Dalgliesh as an editor, said she "knew clearly what she liked and didn't like and stood behind it." But she also "let authors write in their own voice, had insights into writers, and a respect for history".",
I wrote:
However, during the period during which Alice Dalgliesh edited Heinlein's juvenile books is documented in Grumbles from the Grave she made several requests for what Heinlein considered very unreasonable requests for revisions in several of his novels, at least two of which (for his novels Red Planet and Between Planets) were grounded in Freudian psychological analysis of Heinlein's work which Heinlein viewed as unrelated to their literary merit and poorly considered overall. Finally, during the editing of Heinlein's Between Planets, Heinlein subjected Dalgliesh's own children's novel Along Janet's Way tp precisely the same Freudian analysis of her text for psychosexual symbology she used to object to the Martian flat cats - to show her how (in his words) "it is impossible to write any story in such a way that it will not bring a knowing leer to the face of "a good Freudian."
There were also difficulties between Heinlein and Dalgliesh on the matter of Dalgliesh's desire to have her views on gun control legislation, which at the time of the revision work on Tunnel in the Sky and Red Planet, was far from universally accepted in the United States of America, written into those novels. In addition, when Learned T. Bulman, who had reviewed the The Star Beast for the librarians' magazine Library Journal, wrote Dalgliesh a letter threatening that unless Scribners recalled all copies of the book and revised it to remove things to which he personally objected, he would "lambast" it in that librarians' magazine. (Actually, one change to the book - renaming the (already existing in the 1950s in the United States) "emancipation" process from "divorce" - because Alice Dalgliesh had qualms about it, had already been authorized by Heinlein's agent while the Heinleins were vacationing in Hawaii).
Bulman seems to have been reading an advance copy provided by Scribners, which had not been changed as Dalgliesh requested. However, instead of pointing this out to Mr. Bulman, she apologized on behalf of Scribners and Heinlein, and (as Heinlein put it) "dropped it in his lap," having Bulman write Heinlein with his complaints. It turns out that Bulman's complaint wasn't about the "divorce by children" matter at all, but that one of The Star Beast's characters was "flippant." Heinlein told his agent that he expected a stronger defense of his work for Scribners from his editor than immediately caving in to criticism and threats over trivial matters. It was in the letter to his agent over this incident that Heinlein returned to his desire to take his books to another publishing house rather than deal with Alice Dalgliesh's requests for revisions of his work which were not related to their literary merits.
Even after Robert Heinlein had written a series of wildly successful juvenile novels while Alice Dalgliesh was the juveniles editor for Scribners, not only Dalgliesh but the publishing house's entire editorial board rejected his "young adult" novel Starship Troopers flatly in January 1959. This was, according to Heinlein's correspondence, the reason why he ceased to write for Scribners, taking Starship Troopers to George Putnam's Sons, where it was successfully published, winning the 1959 Hugo award. In a letter dated September 19th, 1960, Heinlein refers to an approach made to him to resume writing for Scribners through Heinlein's agent Lurton Blassingame in which he refused to return to their stable of juvenile book authors even though "I do know that Alice Dalgliesh is no longer there," which seems to indicate she was no longer working for Scribners at that time."
I have no doubt that other wikipedia editors will jump in, possibly reverting some of my edits. It's what we do.
But, for a brief, shining moment, a canonization piece on Alice Dalgliesh also recounts RAH's problems with her in loving detail.
VPF
The ONLY reference to her work with Robert Heinlein before I edited the article (I've been a wikipedia.org editor since at least 2008 - I remember contributing earlier but the record doesn't show them now):
"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). She is reported to have argued with him about the books they worked on together. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
Does anyone else here think that's just a BIT skimpy and charitable to Dalgleish, given Heinlein's correspondence on the subject of Dalgleish to his agent Lurton Blassingame?
Anyone who's really read Grumbles From the Grave knows this is a very rosy portrait of Alice Dalgleish's interactions with Robert Heinlein while he wrote for Scribners - a period running, from the dates in Grumbles, from 1948 (Space Cadet) to 1959 (when Scribners rejected Starship Troopers and Heinlein took it to Putnam, where it was published and won that year's Hugo).
So (action: modest cough) I edited the article to provide that balanced viewpoint on which wikipedia.org prides itself:
I edited the offending paragraph to be a little closer to reality:
"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). Robert Heinlein's correspondence (posthumously edited and published at his bequest by his wife Virginia Heinlein as Grumbles from the Grave) describes extensively and at length - in over two chapters of the book - changes Dalgliesh requested to Heinlein's books for Scribners to which Heinlein objected strongly. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
Then, after a paragraph in which another editor said (among other harrumph-provoking things)
"Francis Felsen, who worked under Dalgliesh as an editor, said she "knew clearly what she liked and didn't like and stood behind it." But she also "let authors write in their own voice, had insights into writers, and a respect for history".",
I wrote:
However, during the period during which Alice Dalgliesh edited Heinlein's juvenile books is documented in Grumbles from the Grave she made several requests for what Heinlein considered very unreasonable requests for revisions in several of his novels, at least two of which (for his novels Red Planet and Between Planets) were grounded in Freudian psychological analysis of Heinlein's work which Heinlein viewed as unrelated to their literary merit and poorly considered overall. Finally, during the editing of Heinlein's Between Planets, Heinlein subjected Dalgliesh's own children's novel Along Janet's Way tp precisely the same Freudian analysis of her text for psychosexual symbology she used to object to the Martian flat cats - to show her how (in his words) "it is impossible to write any story in such a way that it will not bring a knowing leer to the face of "a good Freudian."
There were also difficulties between Heinlein and Dalgliesh on the matter of Dalgliesh's desire to have her views on gun control legislation, which at the time of the revision work on Tunnel in the Sky and Red Planet, was far from universally accepted in the United States of America, written into those novels. In addition, when Learned T. Bulman, who had reviewed the The Star Beast for the librarians' magazine Library Journal, wrote Dalgliesh a letter threatening that unless Scribners recalled all copies of the book and revised it to remove things to which he personally objected, he would "lambast" it in that librarians' magazine. (Actually, one change to the book - renaming the (already existing in the 1950s in the United States) "emancipation" process from "divorce" - because Alice Dalgliesh had qualms about it, had already been authorized by Heinlein's agent while the Heinleins were vacationing in Hawaii).
Bulman seems to have been reading an advance copy provided by Scribners, which had not been changed as Dalgliesh requested. However, instead of pointing this out to Mr. Bulman, she apologized on behalf of Scribners and Heinlein, and (as Heinlein put it) "dropped it in his lap," having Bulman write Heinlein with his complaints. It turns out that Bulman's complaint wasn't about the "divorce by children" matter at all, but that one of The Star Beast's characters was "flippant." Heinlein told his agent that he expected a stronger defense of his work for Scribners from his editor than immediately caving in to criticism and threats over trivial matters. It was in the letter to his agent over this incident that Heinlein returned to his desire to take his books to another publishing house rather than deal with Alice Dalgliesh's requests for revisions of his work which were not related to their literary merits.
Even after Robert Heinlein had written a series of wildly successful juvenile novels while Alice Dalgliesh was the juveniles editor for Scribners, not only Dalgliesh but the publishing house's entire editorial board rejected his "young adult" novel Starship Troopers flatly in January 1959. This was, according to Heinlein's correspondence, the reason why he ceased to write for Scribners, taking Starship Troopers to George Putnam's Sons, where it was successfully published, winning the 1959 Hugo award. In a letter dated September 19th, 1960, Heinlein refers to an approach made to him to resume writing for Scribners through Heinlein's agent Lurton Blassingame in which he refused to return to their stable of juvenile book authors even though "I do know that Alice Dalgliesh is no longer there," which seems to indicate she was no longer working for Scribners at that time."
I have no doubt that other wikipedia editors will jump in, possibly reverting some of my edits. It's what we do.
But, for a brief, shining moment, a canonization piece on Alice Dalgliesh also recounts RAH's problems with her in loving detail.
VPF
Chris Zakes
Feb 26, 2015, 8:35:29 AM2/26/15
to
On Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:28:29 -0800 (PST), an orbital mind-control
laser caused Vance Frickey <vfri...@forethought.net> to write:
>This really shouldn't be surprising, but the Wikipedia.org article "Alice Dalgliesh" painted a glowing picture of her as "a pioneer in the field of children's historical fiction." Before today, that view was almost completely unbalanced by the saga of her editorial conflicts with Robert Heinlein while his juvenile novels were published by Scribners.
>
>The ONLY reference to her work with Robert Heinlein before I edited the article (I've been a wikipedia.org editor since at least 2008 - I remember contributing earlier but the record doesn't show them now):
>
>"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). She is reported to have argued with him about the books they worked on together. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
>
>Does anyone else here think that's just a BIT skimpy and charitable to Dalgleish, given Heinlein's correspondence on the subject of Dalgleish to his agent Lurton Blassingame?
>
>Anyone who's really read Grumbles From the Grave knows this is a very rosy portrait of Alice Dalgleish's interactions with Robert Heinlein while he wrote for Scribners - a period running, from the dates in Grumbles, from 1948 (Space Cadet) to 1959 (when Scribners rejected Starship Troopers and Heinlein took it to Putnam, where it was published and won that year's Hugo).
>
>So (action: modest cough) I edited the article to provide that balanced viewpoint on which wikipedia.org prides itself:
>
>I edited the offending paragraph to be a little closer to reality:
>
>"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). Robert Heinlein's correspondence (posthumously edited and published at his bequest by his wife Virginia Heinlein as Grumbles from the Grave) describes extensively and at length - in over two chapters of the book - changes Dalgliesh requested to Heinlein's books for Scribners to which Heinlein objected strongly. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
??? According to the Wikipedia article on Heinlein, "In his lifetime,
laser caused Vance Frickey <vfri...@forethought.net> to write:
>This really shouldn't be surprising, but the Wikipedia.org article "Alice Dalgliesh" painted a glowing picture of her as "a pioneer in the field of children's historical fiction." Before today, that view was almost completely unbalanced by the saga of her editorial conflicts with Robert Heinlein while his juvenile novels were published by Scribners.
>
>The ONLY reference to her work with Robert Heinlein before I edited the article (I've been a wikipedia.org editor since at least 2008 - I remember contributing earlier but the record doesn't show them now):
>
>"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). She is reported to have argued with him about the books they worked on together. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
>
>Does anyone else here think that's just a BIT skimpy and charitable to Dalgleish, given Heinlein's correspondence on the subject of Dalgleish to his agent Lurton Blassingame?
>
>Anyone who's really read Grumbles From the Grave knows this is a very rosy portrait of Alice Dalgleish's interactions with Robert Heinlein while he wrote for Scribners - a period running, from the dates in Grumbles, from 1948 (Space Cadet) to 1959 (when Scribners rejected Starship Troopers and Heinlein took it to Putnam, where it was published and won that year's Hugo).
>
>So (action: modest cough) I edited the article to provide that balanced viewpoint on which wikipedia.org prides itself:
>
>I edited the offending paragraph to be a little closer to reality:
>
>"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). Robert Heinlein's correspondence (posthumously edited and published at his bequest by his wife Virginia Heinlein as Grumbles from the Grave) describes extensively and at length - in over two chapters of the book - changes Dalgliesh requested to Heinlein's books for Scribners to which Heinlein objected strongly. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
Heinlein received four Hugo Awards, for Stranger in a Strange Land,
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, and Double Star...
He was also given two posthumus Hugos, for Farmer in the Sky and The
Man Who Sold the Moon."
By my count, that's one juvie out of six.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Honors
>Then, after a paragraph in which another editor said (among other harrumph-provoking things)
>
>"Francis Felsen, who worked under Dalgliesh as an editor, said she "knew clearly what she liked and didn't like and stood behind it." But she also "let authors write in their own voice, had insights into writers, and a respect for history".",
>
>I wrote:
>
>However, during the period during which Alice Dalgliesh edited Heinlein's juvenile books is documented in Grumbles from the Grave she made several requests for what Heinlein considered very unreasonable requests for revisions in several of his novels, at least two of which (for his novels Red Planet and Between Planets) were grounded in Freudian psychological analysis of Heinlein's work which Heinlein viewed as unrelated to their literary merit and poorly considered overall. Finally, during the editing of Heinlein's Between Planets, Heinlein subjected Dalgliesh's own children's novel Along Janet's Way tp precisely the same Freudian analysis of her text for psychosexual symbology she used to object to the Martian flat cats - to show her how (in his words) "it is impossible to write any story in such a way that it will not bring a knowing leer to the face of "a good Freudian."
Stones." The latter story has the flat cats.
>There were also difficulties between Heinlein and Dalgliesh on the matter of Dalgliesh's desire to have her views on gun control legislation, which at the time of the revision work on Tunnel in the Sky and Red Planet, was far from universally accepted in the United States of America, written into those novels. In addition, when Learned T. Bulman, who had reviewed the The Star Beast for the librarians' magazine Library Journal, wrote Dalgliesh a letter threatening that unless Scribners recalled all copies of the book and revised it to remove things to which he personally objected, he would "lambast" it in that librarians' magazine. (Actually, one change to the book - renaming the (already existing in the 1950s in the United States) "emancipation" process from "divorce" - because Alice Dalgliesh had qualms about it, had already been authorized by Heinlein's agent while the Heinleins were vacationing in Hawaii).
>
>Bulman seems to have been reading an advance copy provided by Scribners, which had not been changed as Dalgliesh requested. However, instead of pointing this out to Mr. Bulman, she apologized on behalf of Scribners and Heinlein, and (as Heinlein put it) "dropped it in his lap," having Bulman write Heinlein with his complaints. It turns out that Bulman's complaint wasn't about the "divorce by children" matter at all, but that one of The Star Beast's characters was "flippant." Heinlein told his agent that he expected a stronger defense of his work for Scribners from his editor than immediately caving in to criticism and threats over trivial matters. It was in the letter to his agent over this incident that Heinlein returned to his desire to take his books to another publishing house rather than deal with Alice Dalgliesh's requests for revisions of his work which were not related to their literary merits.
>
>Even after Robert Heinlein had written a series of wildly successful juvenile novels while Alice Dalgliesh was the juveniles editor for Scribners, not only Dalgliesh but the publishing house's entire editorial board rejected his "young adult" novel Starship Troopers flatly in January 1959. This was, according to Heinlein's correspondence, the reason why he ceased to write for Scribners, taking Starship Troopers to George Putnam's Sons, where it was successfully published, winning the 1959 Hugo award. In a letter dated September 19th, 1960, Heinlein refers to an approach made to him to resume writing for Scribners through Heinlein's agent Lurton Blassingame in which he refused to return to their stable of juvenile book authors even though "I do know that Alice Dalgliesh is no longer there," which seems to indicate she was no longer working for Scribners at that time."
>
>I have no doubt that other wikipedia editors will jump in, possibly reverting some of my edits. It's what we do.
>
>But, for a brief, shining moment, a canonization piece on Alice Dalgliesh also recounts RAH's problems with her in loving detail.
>
>VPF
in the Letters volumes of the Virginia Edition (I've read both in the
past six months, so the details are a bit blurry) but they show a
somewhat less antagonistic relationship between Heinlein and Dalgleish
than what Grumbles portrays. Not all sweetness-and-light, but a bit
more give-and-take.
-Chris Zakes
Texas
--
The only thing that preserved religious freedom in the United States was not the
First Amendment and was not tolerance... but was solely a Mexican standoff
between rival religious sects, each sect intolerant, each sect the sole custodian of
the "One True Faith"-but each sect a minority that gave lip service to keep its
own "One True Faith" from being persecuted by all the other "True Faiths."
-Maureen Johnson Smith in "To Sail Beyond the Sunset"
by Robert Heinlein
Yisroel Markov
Feb 26, 2015, 4:01:55 PM2/26/15
to
On Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:28:29 -0800 (PST), Vance Frickey
<vfri...@forethought.net> said:
>This really shouldn't be surprising, but the Wikipedia.org article "Alice Dalgliesh" painted a glowing picture of her as "a pioneer in the field of children's historical fiction." Before today, that view was almost completely unbalanced by the saga of her editorial conflicts with Robert Heinlein while his juvenile novels were published by Scribners.
>
>The ONLY reference to her work with Robert Heinlein before I edited the article (I've been a wikipedia.org editor since at least 2008 - I remember contributing earlier but the record doesn't show them now):
>
>"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). She is reported to have argued with him about the books they worked on together. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
>
>Does anyone else here think that's just a BIT skimpy and charitable to Dalgleish, given Heinlein's correspondence on the subject of Dalgleish to his agent Lurton Blassingame?
>
>Anyone who's really read Grumbles From the Grave knows this is a very rosy portrait of Alice Dalgleish's interactions with Robert Heinlein while he wrote for Scribners - a period running, from the dates in Grumbles, from 1948 (Space Cadet) to 1959 (when Scribners rejected Starship Troopers and Heinlein took it to Putnam, where it was published and won that year's Hugo).
>
>So (action: modest cough) I edited the article to provide that balanced viewpoint on which wikipedia.org prides itself:
Many thanks for your work, Vance! A labor of love, isn't it?
<vfri...@forethought.net> said:
>This really shouldn't be surprising, but the Wikipedia.org article "Alice Dalgliesh" painted a glowing picture of her as "a pioneer in the field of children's historical fiction." Before today, that view was almost completely unbalanced by the saga of her editorial conflicts with Robert Heinlein while his juvenile novels were published by Scribners.
>
>The ONLY reference to her work with Robert Heinlein before I edited the article (I've been a wikipedia.org editor since at least 2008 - I remember contributing earlier but the record doesn't show them now):
>
>"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). She is reported to have argued with him about the books they worked on together. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
>
>Does anyone else here think that's just a BIT skimpy and charitable to Dalgleish, given Heinlein's correspondence on the subject of Dalgleish to his agent Lurton Blassingame?
>
>Anyone who's really read Grumbles From the Grave knows this is a very rosy portrait of Alice Dalgleish's interactions with Robert Heinlein while he wrote for Scribners - a period running, from the dates in Grumbles, from 1948 (Space Cadet) to 1959 (when Scribners rejected Starship Troopers and Heinlein took it to Putnam, where it was published and won that year's Hugo).
>
>So (action: modest cough) I edited the article to provide that balanced viewpoint on which wikipedia.org prides itself:
[snip]
--
Yisroel "Godwrestler Warriorson" Markov - Boston, MA Member
www.reason.com -- for a sober analysis of the world DNRC
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"Judge, and be prepared to be judged" -- Ayn Rand
Michael Black
Feb 26, 2015, 11:39:17 PM2/26/15
to
involvement in a book. John Steinbeck's relationship with his editor
was fairly deep, there's all those instances of John W. Campbell giving
ideas and encouraring writers at Astounding. So yes, I can see the fuss
over Dalgleish existing for some reason, yet the "relationship" was deeper
She might be portrayed as a "prude", but she was also there to make sure
the book sold, and presumably she had a better idea of what sold than
Heinlein.
The only reason I know about her is because of Heinlein. I never thought
to look her up at wikipedia. So it's good to find that there's more to
hre than simply being a "gatekeeper" to Heinlein's juveniles. It gives
context missing from a Heinlein-centric biography. One might even
consider that perhaps her entry isn't the place for fussing over this (at
least not beyond some comment), that the commentary belongs in a heinlein
related entry.
Michael
Message has been deleted
Vance Frickey
Mar 1, 2015, 6:29:18 PM3/1/15
to
I take your points, everyone, and I'd have let the assertions made in the article go - except for the lack of balance in the article.
It creates what I consider two false impressions:
1) Alice Dalgliesh made Robert Heinlein's career - HIS Hugos are listed as HER accomplishments
2) That little bit by one of her assistants about her seeing things from the author's standpoint.
I can't see how anyone who read Grumbles from the Grave would agree with that statement. She, according to RAH, habitually quibbled with him over matters that seem to me not to touch on the literary merit of the books she edited (and RAH cheerfully admits conceding valid points, or at least points within Dalgliesh's ambit as his editor - the "customer," as he put it).
She also, going by the letters, caved in to a trade magazine reviewer's demand for recall and revision of his work after it had already gone to print because, as the reviewer put it, "one of his characters was flippant," leaving Heinlein to defend his work as best he could.
Granted, that defense was Heinlein's business to make and he the best one to make it - given his and Dalgliesh's lack of rapport during the editing process.
BUT, after Scribners had bought the book and sent it to press, critical objections to a juvenile character's not always pulling the forelock to adult characters in the story strike me as the sort of thing RAH was entitled to expect a defense against by the editor who'd requested revisions from him and approved the novel for publication.
By then, it was as much her novel as his - surely the point the original editor tried to make originally by listing RAH's Hugos for his juvies in HER article.
Perhaps the editor of Robert Heinlein's correspondence chose to show her husband's relationship with the editor of his juvenile novels in an unduly harsh light.
It's possible, and it's not the first criticism I've read of Mrs. Heinlein's editing of Grumbles from the Grave; Frederik Pohl, I believe, thought she had a heavy hand in suppressing RAH's funnier and bawdier letters (the ones he himself exchanged with RAH, most probably - I don't see how he'd have been aware of others, but I'm not Bill Patterson or any of RAH's other biographers).
The main issue as far as I was concerned, though, was WIKIPEDIA'S reputation.
Wikipedia.org is still living down an initially-deserved reputation for bad editing and poor sourcing in its articles. Anyone at all can edit a wikipedia article (statements that my involvement with wikipedia proves this are stipulated for the record).
Perhaps I ought to revisit the article on Alice Dalgliesh to make sure I have not placed undue weight on disagreements she had with Robert Heinlein. That would be a valid reason for revisiting my changes to the article, and one I'll consider.
However, Robert Heinlein, from his own correspondence with his agent, and quoting Dalgliesh herself, reckoned that his books accounted for a preponderance of Scribners' sales during his association with them.
If the original editor of that article wishes to give Ms. Dalgliesh credit for Heinlein's successes, balanced reporting in an encyclopedic article requires presentation of opposing points of view. RAH's views as presented by the authorized editor of his letters seem as authoritative as it's possible to get - and Del Rey's legal staff wouldn't, probably, have let anything unduly contentious or actionable slip into the book.
But you all have given me some food for thought. I probably need to revisit the article and assure that undue weight isn't given eithet to the letters themselves, or to the controversies between author and editor.
Thanks, everyone,
VPF
Vance Frickey
Mar 1, 2015, 6:40:13 PM3/1/15
to
On Thursday, February 26, 2015 at 7:35:29 AM UTC-6, Chris Zakes wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:28:29 -0800 (PST), an orbital mind-control
> laser caused Vance Frickey <vfri...@forethought.net> to write:
>
> >This really shouldn't be surprising, but the Wikipedia.org article "Alice Dalgliesh" painted a glowing picture of her as "a pioneer in the field of children's historical fiction." Before today, that view was almost completely unbalanced by the saga of her editorial conflicts with Robert Heinlein while his juvenile novels were published by Scribners.
> >
> >The ONLY reference to her work with Robert Heinlein before I edited the article (I've been a wikipedia.org editor since at least 2008 - I remember contributing earlier but the record doesn't show them now):
> >
> >"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). She is reported to have argued with him about the books they worked on together. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
> >
> >Does anyone else here think that's just a BIT skimpy and charitable to Dalgleish, given Heinlein's correspondence on the subject of Dalgleish to his agent Lurton Blassingame?
> >
> >Anyone who's really read Grumbles From the Grave knows this is a very rosy portrait of Alice Dalgleish's interactions with Robert Heinlein while he wrote for Scribners - a period running, from the dates in Grumbles, from 1948 (Space Cadet) to 1959 (when Scribners rejected Starship Troopers and Heinlein took it to Putnam, where it was published and won that year's Hugo).
> >
> >So (action: modest cough) I edited the article to provide that balanced viewpoint on which wikipedia.org prides itself:
> >
> >I edited the offending paragraph to be a little closer to reality:
> >
> >"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). Robert Heinlein's correspondence (posthumously edited and published at his bequest by his wife Virginia Heinlein as Grumbles from the Grave) describes extensively and at length - in over two chapters of the book - changes Dalgliesh requested to Heinlein's books for Scribners to which Heinlein objected strongly. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
>
> ??? According to the Wikipedia article on Heinlein, "In his lifetime,
> Heinlein received four Hugo Awards, for Stranger in a Strange Land,
> The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, and Double Star...
> He was also given two posthumus Hugos, for Farmer in the Sky and The
> Man Who Sold the Moon."
>
> By my count, that's one juvie out of six.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Honors
Chris, thanks! Glad you checked the facts.
> On Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:28:29 -0800 (PST), an orbital mind-control
> laser caused Vance Frickey <vfri...@forethought.net> to write:
>
> >This really shouldn't be surprising, but the Wikipedia.org article "Alice Dalgliesh" painted a glowing picture of her as "a pioneer in the field of children's historical fiction." Before today, that view was almost completely unbalanced by the saga of her editorial conflicts with Robert Heinlein while his juvenile novels were published by Scribners.
> >
> >The ONLY reference to her work with Robert Heinlein before I edited the article (I've been a wikipedia.org editor since at least 2008 - I remember contributing earlier but the record doesn't show them now):
> >
> >"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). She is reported to have argued with him about the books they worked on together. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
> >
> >Does anyone else here think that's just a BIT skimpy and charitable to Dalgleish, given Heinlein's correspondence on the subject of Dalgleish to his agent Lurton Blassingame?
> >
> >Anyone who's really read Grumbles From the Grave knows this is a very rosy portrait of Alice Dalgleish's interactions with Robert Heinlein while he wrote for Scribners - a period running, from the dates in Grumbles, from 1948 (Space Cadet) to 1959 (when Scribners rejected Starship Troopers and Heinlein took it to Putnam, where it was published and won that year's Hugo).
> >
> >So (action: modest cough) I edited the article to provide that balanced viewpoint on which wikipedia.org prides itself:
> >
> >I edited the offending paragraph to be a little closer to reality:
> >
> >"Dalgliesh also developed juvenile science fiction, and was Robert A. Heinlein's editor for many of his books, from Red Planet, (1949), to Have Space Suit Will Travel (1959). Robert Heinlein's correspondence (posthumously edited and published at his bequest by his wife Virginia Heinlein as Grumbles from the Grave) describes extensively and at length - in over two chapters of the book - changes Dalgliesh requested to Heinlein's books for Scribners to which Heinlein objected strongly. At one point she commented that she wished she had a girl's writer who could turn out a book a year, as Heinlein did for boys. Taking her idea to heart, he wrote the short story "Poor Daddy", with a teenage girl for the protagonist. Three of Heinlein's juveniles that she published won Hugo Awards for Best Novel."
>
> ??? According to the Wikipedia article on Heinlein, "In his lifetime,
> Heinlein received four Hugo Awards, for Stranger in a Strange Land,
> The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, and Double Star...
> He was also given two posthumus Hugos, for Farmer in the Sky and The
> Man Who Sold the Moon."
>
> By my count, that's one juvie out of six.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Honors
I'll double check with the http://www.thehugoawards.org/?s=heinlein - primary sourcing, not going to another wikipedia article - to verify that we caught all the errors.
And I'll do what I can to look at all other material I have access to (our local library's staff are very kind about interlibrary loans) to make sure I'm not placing undue emphasis on these particular letters.
I can make any necessary edits while at the same time determining whether or not I placed undue weight on the Blassingame-Heinlein correspondence on Dalgliesh.
Again, muchissimas gracias!
VPF
Vance Frickey
Mar 1, 2015, 8:07:56 PM3/1/15
to
1) to reflect that only ONE of RAH's juveniles for Scribners (Farmer in the Sky) won the Hugo (HSSWT was a Hugo nominee for Best Novel, years later)
2) corrected my own error - saying this time correctly that The Rolling Stones was the novel in which Alice Dalgliesh had trouble with the sexual connotations of the "Martian flat cats"
3) and I trimmed my loggorhea regarding the conflicts between Dalgliesh and Heinlein, making it clearer at the end that the proximate reason for Heinlein's departure from Scribners was the entire editorial board's rejection of Starship Troopers.
Hopefully this places the issues between Dalgliesh and Heinlein in perspective in that article. It's unpleasant work to have to do - and I mean that - but less pleasant to have yet another article in wikipedia.org be used as a billboard for someone's professional reputation, implying that this person played a larger part in RAH's success than in fact, she did.
VPF
Vance Frickey
Mar 2, 2015, 4:48:09 PM3/2/15
to
On Thursday, February 26, 2015 at 3:01:55 PM UTC-6, Yisroel Markov wrote:
> Many thanks for your work, Vance! A labor of love, isn't it?
>
You're very welcome, Yisroel!
> Many thanks for your work, Vance! A labor of love, isn't it?
>
This is "paying forward" to other fans of RAH, to make sure that the public record regarding Robert A. Heinlein's achievements and other people's place in them is as accurate as can be managed.
Certainly, this is an acknowledgement of the debt I and other readers of Heinlein's novels and short stories owe him, and a small measure of respect for his memory.
Thanks for your praise, sir.
VPF
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