Little Stories for Bedtime vs Burgess Bedtime Stories

As Thornton Burgess explained in his autobiography, the newspaper bedtime story was already a common feature before he started writing "Little Stories for Bedtime." The field was already full of competitors, including Howard R. Garis's "Uncle Wiggily" stories. Burgess's success would attract bedtime story writers with a slightly more naturalistic bent, such as "Blanche Silver" and her "Good Night" stories.


As Burgess states ruefully in his autobiography, however, his greatest competitor would be himself. When Burgess had signed his initial contract with Associated Newspapers, he had inadvertently given them perpetual reprint rights to his stories. When contract renewal talks failed in 1919, Associated Newspapers retained the copyright to "Little Stories for Bedtime" while Burgess continued telling new stories in "Burgess Bedtime Stories," now distributed by the New York Tribune syndicate. Associated Newspapers offered their Burgess stories for a deep discount, further eating away the market for the new series.

The Boston Globe appears to have stopped running Burgess stories in September 1919. Instead of simply re-running the old stories, it offered a boldly imitative replacement feature--"Barton Bedtime Stories," starring "Nibble Rabbit."

While the feature's author, John "Barton" Breck, would write enough stories to fill at least one book, "Barton Bedtime Stories" would disappear after a couple of years. The Boston Herald, meanwhile, would run the new Burgess series.

Until the end of Burgess's writing career, thus, there were two Burgess story series in American and Canadian newspapers. "Burgess Bedtime Stories" offered new stories until around 1960 (as Burgess neared retirement he would offer some repeats himself) and "Little Stories for Bedtime" ran the first seven years of Burgess in a continual repeat cycle. During the Great Depression, newspapers looking to economize would often switch to the cheap version of Burgess. Making things even more complicated was the inclusion of "Little Stories" in weekly pre-printed supplements distributed by the Western Newspaper Union to local papers in the 1930s. Adding the fact that newspapers did not always run the feature as scheduled, sometimes running stories up to six months late, on any given day in American and Canadian newspapers one could find half a dozen different Burgess stories.

Next: Harrison Cady

Little Stories for Bedtime: Communities and Commodities [Updated August 2013]

Burgess's "Little Stories for Bedtime" feature quickly became a valuable commodity. Jason Rogers, in his book Newspaper Building (1918), describes its value to newspaper publishers:

Realizing that the immense circulation of our Sunday newspapers as compared with their week-day issues was largely represented by the hold on the children obtained by their comic sections and such matter, we secured the service of Thornton W. Burgess in the Associated Newspapers to produce his own famous "Bed Time Stories."

These little stories are without question the best thing of the kind produced, and are one of the very best newspaper features. Following the lead of The Kansas City Star, which organized a "Bed Time Story Club" with a red "Peter Rabbitt"(sic) button as a club emblem, we stuck to the job until we had 198,000 children enrolled as members of The Globe's Bed Time Story Club. This meant that a large part of these 198,000 children "cried for The Globe" every night. We carried the idea to the extent of monster meetings of the Bed Time Story Club in the public parks, where we brought out 15,000 to 20,000 at a gathering. We had a "Peter Rabbitt Show" at one of New York's largest theaters for a full week to crowded houses. The members of our "Bed Time Story Club" have done really wonderful things in the way of co-operative effort to raise small funds for charitable purposes. We regularly hold sewing, composition, drawing, and other contests to keep them interested.

This huge children's organization, the largest of its kind in any city in the country, is a deep-rooted, far-reaching affair. It works its way into all sorts and conditions of households. Children of the richest and most exclusive families in New York and vicinity are just as much interested as others.

In my meetings with prominent business men it is not unusual for me to hear the remark:"My grandson is a great admirer of your newspaper. He started us taking The Globe for that Bed Time Story, and now we all like it."

Essentially, the feature was used strategically to attract children and create household demand. The serial nature of the feature (Burgess frequently ended a day's story with a cliffhanger and made a point of previewing the next day's story) also contributed to the demand. The club aspect further increased demand by offering premiums and bringing children together in a community--a community, as in the Green Meadow Club,that could be mobilized for pro-social purposes. To join, children needed to pledge that they would "be kind to the birds and animals and protect them from their enemies."

Contrary to Rogers's account above, Burgess stories in the The New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser were not an immediate hit. In fact, during March 1912 (the feature's second month), the Globe only ran six of twenty-six available stories. (It wasn't until May 1912 that the stories were run every day.)  Nevertheless, eventually Burgess's popularity became undeniable and the Globe deployed the promotional activities listed by Rogers. In 1912, the Burgess story occupied an available news hole on any page it fit; by 1916 the Burgess story and its various sub-features and advertisements occupied most of a page.

A sample Little Stories for Bedtime page

In a profile of Burgess in the Saturday Review, it is suggested that the Kansas City Star's Bedtime Stories Club program was actually a business disaster--so many children signed up that the cost of membership buttons was more than the paper could afford. The Globe, on the other hand, missed no opportunity to merchandise. Bedtime Stories Club members were aggressively recruited, the paper offering $50 for the young reader who brought in the most new members. The "monster meeting" in Rogers's account was the subject of a full page account (provided in full here). Thousands of children and their parents assembled in New York's Botanical Gardens to hear Thornton Burgess (and Ernest Thompson Seton) speak and to see a huge, costumed Peter Rabbit (who emerged from a taxicab--to the apparent surprise of Burgess).

 

The mass rally may not have been quite as successful as Rogers claims. Here's an account from a 1967 column by William A. Burns in the San Antonio Express:

...on Member's Day they had the wonderful idea of dressing up some halfwit in a Peter Rabbit suit and have him prance all over the place, his ears waving in the Bronx breeze, chucking children under the chin. But kids had pictured Peter as a little rabbit, not as a six-foot giant! The result was that most children panicked, burst into tears, got hysterical, or violently attacked Peter Rabbit with fists and feet.

While the Globe understood the value of Burgess's feature it may not have always understood what it meant to its young readers.

Newspapers that had "Little Stories for Bedtime" advertised the fact. Here's an ad for the Syracuse Herald from 1917:

Note the claim of exclusivity (as well as a purported Burgess friendship with James Whitcomb Riley--news to me). Note also the focus on Burgess the person. Newspapers would request that Burgess write occasional "personal letters" to the children in the audience, published in the paper but addressed to them and written in Burgess's voice.

Rivals in other newspapers emerged to compete for the valuable children's bedtime story crown. Unfortunately for Thornton Burgess, one of his competitors would be himself.

Next: Little Stories for Bedtime vs Burgess Bedtime Stories

Little Stories for Bedtime: Origin

Burgess lost his job at Phelps Publishing when Good Housekeeping was sold in 1911. Encouraged by his success with Old Mother West Wind, he shopped around a proposal for a daily newspaper bedtime story feature. Here is the account of its genesis in his autobiography:

I chanced to read in a local paper some syndicated stories for little folk. They were pleasantly wholesome entertainment, nothing more. Why not equally entertaining story with an educational value as well? Why not amusing, entertaining short stories of our friendly neighbors in fur and feathers, that would at the same time open for young readers the beautiful wonder world of Mother Nature?(p.111)

It should be noted that in other accounts, Burgess stressed the pedagogical goals of this project. Here he is in an article in Natural History (also included in his autobiograpy) 

When I began writing animal stories for children, it was with the sole purpose of teaching the facts about the forms of animal life most familiar to American children. I endeavored to do this by stimulating the imagination, which is the birthright of every child, at the same time holding absolutely to the truth so far as the facts concerning the subject of each story were concerned.

He would pull back from this statement in later years, admitting that entertaining children (and getting paid work) was the real goal initially. In the fall of 1911 he heard from George Matthews Adam who had just formed a syndicate of national papers called the "Associated Newspapers" that included the Chicago Daily News, Kansas City Star, Philadelphia Bulletin, New York Globe, and Boston Globe. Adams gave Burgess a six month trial period for his bedtime stories, starting in February 1912. Burgess passed the test and his feature began appearing throughout the syndicate in the fall of 1912. 

(The earliest story I can find in the Boston Globe is November 16, 1912.)

   

Burgess would write a story six days a week until he retired in 1960--15,000 stories in all. This would become his central creative enterprise. Most of his books were assembled from the stories (the story above, for example, would show up in The Adventures of Mister Mocker) and he used them as jumping off points to support other projects (anti-hunting efforts, e.g.). 

Anecdotal evidence suggests the stories were in fact used by parents, especially fathers, as the evening bedtime story. Burgess became known as "The Bedtime Story" man, a title he initially embraced (it made him a fortune) but later resented (he preferred "naturalist.") 

Next: Little Stories for Bedtime: Commodities and Communities

Bedtime Stories Prehistory: Friends in feathers and fur

In a 1962 AP story, Burgess remembers his favorite book from childhood. It was not Aim! Fire! Bang! Stories, as stated in his autobiography. Rather it was one in a series of natural history readers for children: Friends in feathers and fur (1885) by James Johonnot. 

Much of Burgess's vocabulary, pedagogical perspective, even character names (Longlegs the Heron) can be found here.  

Next: Little Stories for Bedtime: Origin

RESEARCH NEWS FLASH: Burgess's nature-faker in-joke

From Burgess's Bedtime Stories daily: December 8, 1953. Reddy Fox rides on the back of a sheep to escape from dogs.

You may remember an earlier post on the Nature-Faker controversy in which this particular scene from a Ernest Thompson Seton story is called into question.

It looks like Burgess sided with the "Nature-Fakers" after all...

Birds of the Radio Nature League

Starting in the fall of 1924, Thornton Burgess hosted a weekly radio program on WBZ (based in Springfield at the time). He would call it "The Radio Nature League." Instead of writing 15-30 minutes of original material each week, Burgess called on members of his league to contribute questions and experiences about wild life which could be incorporated into his show. Soon, as the show gained traction, he would invite real naturalists as speakers. I am planning to write much more about the Radio Nature League in future posts.

For now, though, I wanted to concentrate on the role of birds in the program. During his first year of broadcasting, after the first stage of soliciting club members, Burgess introduced a new class of membership. League members who pledged to feed birds during the winter received a "silver star." He would go on to create other categories as well: League members who built birdhouses in the spring received a "red star" and League members who (following the model of the Green Meadow Club) created or helped to create bird sanctuaries received a "gold star."

Why was "feed the birds" the first action? I think Burgess truly believed that song birds benefited from being fed during the winter (a somewhat more dubious idea these days). On the other hand, I think this was a persuasion strategy. Burgess understood that feeding birds was a simple but powerful way to bring humans and wild life together--an act of kindness on the part of humans that would be gratefully appreciated by birds, in bring them into closer contact. It might also stimulate curiosity about the bird visitors, which would lead to more correspondence and identification with the League.

In fact, when Burgess would briefly come out of radio retirement in the late 1930s to do a program for the Springfield ASPCA, he would begin in classic form, this time soliciting members by making them pledge to feed the birds.

Next: Bedtime Stories prehistory: Friends in feather and fur

Burgess Bird Book for Children

 

 Little & Brown published the Burgess Bird Book for Children in October 1919. Burgess had run the individual stories comprising it earlier that year as part of his Bedtime Stories newspaper series, but these were written with the final work in mind. Here is the full text. 

 It was Burgess's first real natural history book, with realistic illustrations by the greatest bird artist of the era, Louis Agassiz Fuertes. (Cady, while a great illustrator, was not a naturalist--note that he depicts Yank Yank as a red-breasted nuthatch, not a white-breasted nuthatch, above).

   

 Burgess's friend, William Hornaday, wrote a stunningly positive review. (I think Hornaday was the original inspiration for the project but I need to re-find the citation).  

The book was a great success and inspired a series of similar books focused on animals, flowers, and the seashore. This was a book intended for younger readers. Burgess decided he wouldn't present facts about birds directly. Instead he would present the facts in the form of dialogues between Peter Rabbit (the stand-in for the curious child) and a variety of appropriate interlocutors, particularly Jenny Wren. Burgess would use this dialogue mode of presentation for his other natural history books and it would serve him well when he moved to radio in the 1920s. 

 [UPDATE: Burgess would publish a bird guide more suitable for adults in 1933, titled Birds You Should Know. This pre-dated Roger Tory Peterson's revolutionary field guide by one year.] 

  Next post: The Birds of the Radio Nature League