Lindbergh, Anne Morrow, 1906-2001

Anne Spencer Morrow Lindbergh was born in Englewood, New Jersey on 22 June 1906, the daughter of ambassador and politician Dwight Morrow and author and Smith College president Elizabeth Cutter Morrow. From 1924-1928 Anne studied literature at Smith College, where she graduated in 1928 with a bachelor's degree in English. In May 1929, after a brief courting period, Anne married Charles Augustus Lindbergh (1902-1974). Anne had met Lindbergh in Mexico in 1927, while her father was serving as ambassador. With Charles, she had six children: Charles Augustus, Jr. (1930-1932), Jon (1932-), Land (1937-), Anne (1940-1993), Scott (1942-), and Reeve (1945-).

In March 1932 Anne's first child, Charles, Jr. ("Charlie"), who was twenty months old, was kidnapped from the Lindberghs' home near Hopewell, New Jersey. The press dubbed the kidnapping the "Crime of the Century." In May 1932 after a seventy-two day search, Charles was found dead in a shallow grave only three miles from the Lindbergh estate. In 1936 Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German immigrant, convicted criminal, and World War I veteran, was executed by the state of New Jersey for the murder of the Lindbergh baby. In December 1936 the Lindbergh's fled America for England to escape harassment by the press and the general public. In April 1939, with war looming in Europe, the Lindberghs returned home to the United States.

In 1934 Anne published her first book, North to the Orient, based on her flights to China and Japan with Charles in 1931. In 1938, she published her second book, The Listen! The Wind, inspired by her visit to Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands, near the coast of Africa. In 1940 she published her most controversial work, Wave of the Future, which critics--in light of Charles' involvement with the America First movement and the Lindberghs' visits to Germany to meet with high-ranking Nazi officials--considered pro-fascist. Despite such criticism, Anne kept writing, publishing the novel The Steep Ascent in 1944, a thinly-veiled fictitious account of a woman aviator flying with her husband over Europe. In 1955 Anne published her classic work and bestseller Gift from the Sea, which called for women and mothers to seek moments of peace, solitude, and introspection amid the busy realties of modern life.

In addition to her novels and other creative writing, Anne published a significant amount of poetry, including her collection The Unicorn (1956). In 1962 she published the novel Dearly Beloved, concerning the troubles involved in love, relationships, and married life. Later, she published a compendium of essays for Life magazine, issued as Earth Shine. In the 1970s Harcourt Brace publishers, with the help of Anne and Charles, issued volumes containing excerpts from Anne's correspondence and diaries: Bring Me a Unicorn (1971); Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead (1973); Locked Rooms and Open Doors (1974); The Flower and the Nettle (1976); and War Within and Without (1980). Anne lived in Maui with Charles until his death in August 1974 and later moved to Connecticut. Anne Morrow Lindbergh died in 2001.