Nora Waln Explained

Nora Waln (1895  - 27 September 1964) was a best-selling American writer and journalist in the 1930s–50s, writing books and articles on her time spent in Germany and China. She was among the first to report on the spread of Nazism from 1934 to 1938. She traveled widely in Europe and Asia, contributing articles to the Atlantic Monthly and other magazines. She was one of the few correspondents who reported from Communist China and Mongolia, reporting for the Saturday Evening Post for three and a half years, including reporting from the Korean War (1947-1951). She regularly contributed to the Atlantic Monthly from 1925 to 1962.

Early years

She was the daughter of Thomas Lincoln and Lillian Quest Waln,[1] from a Pennsylvanian Quaker family.[2]

In 1918, she was Publicity Secretary of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (later the Near East Foundation) and contributed a foreword to the book Ravished Armenia.[3]

From childhood, she was interested in Chinese culture after learning of a family trading-connection with the Lin family of Hopei Province from the early 19th-century.

China

Having made contact with the family, she left Swarthmore College before graduating, and in 1920, set out for China.[4]

She ended up living for 12 years in the Lin household as a "daughter of affection" and developed this experience into her acclaimed memoir House of Exile, which was published in 1933. This gave readers an insider's look at Chinese culture and customs in a time of change following the overthrow of the Qing dynasty. The family was considered "exiles" because a Lin had been ordered by thirteenth-century Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan to help work with the Grand Canal in Hopei, and had moved North from the family's Canton homestead.

House of Exile sold well in England and America, as did French and German translations.

Marriage

While living in China, Waln met and married George Edward Osland-Hill, an English official in the Chinese Post Office,[5] in 1922.[6]

Ted Osland-Hill had one daughter from a previous marriage. She was Marie Osland-Hill, later Marie Wade.[7]

Dialogue from Reaching for the Stars (Cresset Press, 1939) pp. 2–3

Germany

From 30 June 1934 to April 1938, she and her husband lived in Germany. She was moved to write Reaching for the Stars, completing it on Christmas Day, 1938. It was published in London by the Cresset Press and in Boston, USA by Little, Brown and Co. in April 1939. It sold well in England and America.[8]

The book recounts the spread of Hitler's Nazi movement against a backdrop of her despair for the changes in a people she loved. In spite of the horror which she saw and described, she felt that the German people would revolt against Nazism.[9]

Her damning exposé of Nazi Germany was a bestseller in the US in 1939 (ahead of Mein Kampf),.[10] The book was reissued in paperback by Soho Press in 1992 under a new title, The Approaching Storm: One Woman's Story of Germany, 1934-1938.

After the war, she returned to Germany and attended the Nuremberg Trials[11]

After Germany

In Britain, during the War, she served on the China Convoy Committee of Friends Ambulance Unit[12]

After the end of the War, she traveled the world, filing stories for several prominent magazines. She returned to America, several times, to speak on the Chautauqua-Redpath circuit. Fliers for her tours in 1946,[13] 1952 [14] and 1955 [15] survive in the organisation's archives now held by the University of Iowa Library.[16]

A brochure for her 1952 speaking tour of the America states:[14]

and continues:

The brochure for her 1946 tour [13] says: "During the war, she spoke extensively to large audiences throughout England and Scotland". Presumably this was between 1938, when she moved from Germany to her home on Buckinghamshire [17] and the USA entering the war in 1942. Her Who's Who entry says her career included administering Kappa Kappa Gamma Fund for bombed mothers and children since 1940 and membership of the council, American Outpost in Britain. These activities presumably started during the 1939-1945 war.

The brochure for her 1955 tour gives more details of her travels:

In 1947, she was awarded the King Haakon VII Freedom Cross by the Government of Norway.[18]

In 1956, she received the Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania Award.[19] Nora Waln died on 27 September 1964.[20] Her husband had died on 5 January 1958.[21]

Publications

External links

Notes and References

  1. http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/friends/ead/5265waln.xml Parents' names
  2. http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/w/a/l/Geoffrey-B-Walne/BOOK-0001/0004-0004.html Descendants of Richard Waln of Burholme, Lancashire
  3. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ravished_Armenia/Foreword "Ravished Armenia/Foreword"
  4. According to Women of History Nora Waln was born 4 June 1895.
  5. In 1916, G. E. Osland-Hill was Deputy Postal Commissioner in Kaifengfu, Honan, according to the London Gazette, 17-03-1916, p. 2933
  6. Obituary of Nora Waln in The Times, 6 October 1964; p. 14; Issue 56135; col F.
  7. http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/friends/ead/5169nowa.xml Details of step-daughter: Nora Waln Research Papers, 1933-1990 in the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College
  8. Sales of Reaching ...: Editor's copy is the 9th impression, published in July 1942.
  9. Nora Waln, Reaching for the Stars (London: Cresset Press, 1938), book jacket.
  10. UK sales 30,000 in 2.5 months - display advertisement in The Observer, 11 June 1939.
  11. Nora Waln, "Crime and Punishment", Atlantic, January 1946, 43, cited by McMillan Houston Johnson in an MA thesis at The University of Tennessee Knoxville, May 2006.
  12. China Convoy Committee membership - Who's Who, Swarthmore Phoenix, 9 January 1946, p. 1 column b, "Nora Waln is next lecturer". According to A. Tegla Davies (1947). Friends Ambulance Unit – The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War 1939–1945. London: George Allen & Unwin, pp. 234–297, the FAU China Convoy operated from 1941 to 1946. Davies makes no mention of Nora Waln. The Minutes of the China Convoy Committee are at Friends House, London (Temp Mss 876). Nora Waln is shown as a Member.
  13. http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/tc/id/19948/rec/2 Brochure for Nora Waln's 1946 lecture tour
  14. http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/tc/id/43649/rec/3 Brochure for Nora Waln's 1952 tour
  15. http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/tc/id/15921/rec/1 Brochure of Nora Waln's 1955 lecture tour
  16. http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/traveling-culture/inventory/msc150.html University of Iowa Library
  17. Who's Who gives her English address as "Dobins, Fulmer, Bucks, England." It is near to Jordans Quaker Meeting House.Nora Waln is included in the Lists of Members of Buckinghamshire Quarterly Meeting,in the Jordans Local Meeting section, as a member of another Monthly Meeting, from 1945 to 1963.
  18. [w:no:Liste over tildelinger av Haakon VIIs Frihetskors|List of those awarded the Haakon Cross (in Norwegian).]
  19. http://www.revenue.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_2_71319_0_0_18/ Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania Award
  20. Date of death given in table published under the Trustees Act in the LondonGazette 30-04-1965 p. 4321.
  21. Death notice for G.E. Osland-Hill in The Times, 8 January 1958; p. 1; Issue 54043; col A. His age was stated as 73.
  22. Surrender the Heart mentioned in Nora Waln Research Papers, 1933-1990 in the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College Ref RG 5/169
  23. Surrender the Heart listed as one of her publications with the date 1961

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