We are delighted to announce the publication of Larry Abbott's Jane Dolinger: The Adventurous Life of an American Travel Writer. Larry, a member of the Critical Writing faculty, specializes in modern American literature. His influential study, "Comic Art: Characteristics and Potentialities of a Narrative Medium" (Journal of Popular Culture, 1986), defined much of the critical terminology used today in studying the comic art medium.
Larry's new biography promises to be equally influential. Scholar Robin Roberts writes, "A fascinating and engrossing study of a ground-breaking woman traveler and writer. The subject of this biography, Jane Dolinger, demonstrates that the mid-twentieth-century idea that the jungle was 'no place for a girl' was wrong." She adds, "Abbott's careful and sympathetic study places this amazing popular writer's life in its historical and literary context." Biographer Tina Santi Flaherty wonders why Dolinger "isn't already among the top tier of the most admired women in history. Thankfully, Abbott's lively, well-researched biography makes Jane's lasting contribution to the travel genre abundantly clear."
For almost forty years, Jane Dolinger traveled the world and wrote about her adventures, from the Amazon jungle to the sands of the Sahara. She produced eight books and more than a thousand articles between 1955 and 1995, and she also earned a reputation as a glamorous celebrity and model. Jane Dolinger was an anomaly in her time, a dynamic and attractive woman with an impressive literary talent, a woman who lived and documented a most unconventional and inspirational life. Sometimes controversial but always outstanding, Jane was a pioneer among women and writers. Here for the first time, her life and work are studied in a thoroughly researched yet entertaining literary biography.