Anna Hubbard

the long version

"For forty-three years Anna Hubbard (1902-1986) and her husband, Kentucky painter and writer Harlan Hubbard (1900-1988), lived a splendidly civilized life that was also simple and close to nature. Early in their marriage they made a long, adventurous drifting journey down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in a shantyboat. "Far from leaving anything behind," Anna wrote of that trip years later, "we took with us all that was most worthwhile out of our previous living." Harlan wrote, in his books and journals, of the shantyboating years and his settling with Anna in 1952 on the Trimble County, Kentucky, shore of the Ohio at Payne Hollow. He wrote of the satisfactions of providing for themselves, without electricity, and about the pleasures of their leisure - painting, writing, reading, and playing music. He wrote rapturously about the river, the seasons, and the landscape. But in matters of human relations Harlan was emotionally reticent, and he wrote little about Anna." "Meanwhile Anna, the product of a Victorian and Dutch upbringing, was reserved and private. Her feelings were often hidden from her closest friends, from Harlan, and even from herself. The questions that readers of Harlan's books have always asked about Anna have gone unanswered, and the story of her life has been untold - until now.". "Mia Cunningham grew up in a house built by Harlan, visited the couple during childhood summers, and corresponded with Anna for twenty-eight years. Cunningham sought out others who had known the Hubbards, examined Anna's unpublished writings, and discovered correspondence between Anna and girlhood friends that revealed little-known dimensions of her personality."--BOOK JACKET.