Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was acclaimed for her novels, short stories, and works of non-fiction that vividly portrayed both the beauty of the Florida backwoods and the lives of the people who lived there. After publishing her first two novels—South Moon Under in 1933 and Golden Apples in 1935—Rawlings achieved major success with The Yearling.
Published in 1938, The Yearling tells the story of 12-year-old Jody Baxter, who lives with his parents in the Florida backwoods. When a rattlesnake bite prompts his father to shoot and kill a doe to save h
is own life, Jody adopts the doe’s fawn as a pet. The rambunctious fawn soon causes trouble at the farmstead, forcing the Baxters to make a difficult decision during uncertain times.
Published to rave reviews, The Yearling sold 240,000 copies during its first year in print and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1939. The New York Herald Tribune compared the book’s protagonist, Jody Baxter, to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and a Time magazine reviewer wrote that The Yearling stood “a good chance, when adults have finished with it, of finding a permanent place in adolescent libraries.”
In 2008 Rawlings was featured on the 24th stamp in the Literary Arts series. In the foreground of the stamp art is a portrait of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings based on an undated photograph. The background depicts a fawn at a watering hole in the Florida scrub country. The rows of spots on the fawn, which are consistent with descriptions in The Yearling, indicate that the fawn is a young male.
USPS Stamp of Approval 