Берта Ранкл: Американская писательница и драматург

American writer

Bertha Runkle (after marriage, Bash; 1879–1958) was an American novelist and playwright born in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. From a literary family, she wrote five novels. Her first and best known, The Helmet of Navarre, was made into a Broadway play. Her father had been a respected New York lawyer who had served as legal counsel for the New York Tribune and her mother had worked as an editorial writer. Lucia Runkle came upon a poem by her daughter and was anxious to have it judged on its merits by the editor in chief. With no clue to the authorship, he was delighted with its strength, its unusual form, and the splendid swing of the lines. The poem was at once ordered into "The World's Best Literature," and Edmund Clarence Stedman afterward included it in his American Anthology. As a result, Runkle was sent to Miss Bracket's school, a fashionable girls' boarding school in New York, until she was thirteen, when she was taken away because of delicate health. From that time she was schooled in the large home library, and studied with her mother.</blockquote>

Its first form was much shorter, and it was a tale of political intrigue and martial adventure, without a heroine. But the editor of The Century Company insisted that a spoiled public would not be content without "the swish of the petticoats" and a dozen more chapters were called for, which she supplied. The book went on to become No. 3 on the list of bestselling novels in the United States for the entire year of 1901 as determined by The New York Times. The year of its release, she teamed up with playwright Lawrence Marston to adapt her story to the Broadway stage in a production by Charles Frohman.

The magazine for which her mother had written, The Outlook, had the following to say about Runkle's second novel, The Truth About Tolna. "The young lady who achieved popularity at a single stroke, Miss Bertha Runkle, has written of an American fortnight almost as crowded with events as were those few amazing days in The Helmet of Navarre. There are a dash and vigor about the handling of this novel of modern New York life that will carry it, perhaps, beyond its real merits. The double character forced upon Tolna by his artistic friend and manager gives opportunity for several farcical situations and an occasional semi tragic note. Tolna and Mrs. Burnham are most entertaining. Denys Alden is less convincing than some other members of his social set."

The Bookman had the following to say about The Scarlet Rider,"The scene of this new story is the Isle of Wight, the date is the period of the American Revolution, and the centre of interest is an aristocratic but impoverished family in which the title, in the absence of male heirs, will descend to the beautiful but headstrong and undisciplined daughter who has been left to bring herself up as best she could. Her unhappy neglected and invalid mother seldom leaves her own chamber, while her dissolute spendthrift father is, for the most part, away from home, engaged in diversions of which drinking and gaming form the mildest elements. At the opening of the story the whole neighbourhood is in a turmoil concerning a certain audacious highwayman, known only as the "Scarlet Rider", who has been terrorising all the southern coast of England. Consequently, when Lettice, the madcap daughter of Lord Yarracombe, finds a handsome young stranger hiding behind a chest in a cobwebbed room of the old house, it is only natural that she should leap to the conclusion that he is the highwayman in question, and quite in keeping with her adventurous spirit that she should seek to shield him by letting him masquerade as the new assistant butler. The situation is well developed and the whole tone of the narrative has a well sustained lightness with just a hint of tragedy lurking beneath the surface. But the one little fact which robs this moment of its promised bigness is that the secret of the story is far too transparent. It takes no special cleverness to discover the Scarlet Rider's identity before the book is one third read and the only remaining surprise is at the density of the other actors in the story who are phenomenally long in discovering the truth."

Country Life in America had the following to say about Runkle's fourth novel, Straight Down the Crooked Lane,"A straightforward story about folks who are recognizably human, as well as interesting; and the narrative gets off swiftly in the first chapter and never slackens until the end. The scene shifts from Newport high society life to the Philippines; making stops in Japan and India. "Straight Down the Crooked Lane" has all the story telling charm of "The Helmet of Navarre"; but it deals with people and places of today, and is enriched by the author's fuller years of artistic endeavor. It is undoubtedly the best novel so far achieved by that past master of story telling, Bertha Runkle."