Women Writers Along the Rivers
Buchanan County, MO

Fairy Louise Platt Hauck (1883 - 1943)

Hauck was the daughter of Elizabeth Landon Prescott Platt and William Healy. Her mother, Elizabeth Prescott, divorced Healy and married Emory Melzar Platt in 1891. He founded Platt Commercial College in St. Joseph. Louise Platt Hauck assumed her stepfather's name.

The Platts moved to St. Joseph from Kansas in 1892. Fairy Louise Platt married Leslie F. Hauck and maintained a family home at 2211 Francis Street. Here, Hauck raised her son and two daughters and helped support the family by writing over seventy novels and hundreds of short stories.

Hauck's daughter recalled that her mother struggled for years as a writer before she obtained commercial success:

. . . Little has been said of the years of preparation, of writing night after night, short stories and sending them to the publisher of Muncie Magazine who refused to publish them, but gave her [Hauck] the best criticism any writer could wish for. That they later turned into a great many True Confessions or True Romance tales, they also gave her a chance to widen her scope of types of work. I have a quote here which was written long ago:

"The lower drawer of her dresser was filled with rejects, write it all over again, tell it from another point of view she was advised. . . start with a new idea, and then discard it! This was all part of our childhood background, we seldom heard the tired sigh from Mother, when another script was tossed into that drawer, a full month's work gone . . ."

I shall never forget the day when the morning mail brought in her first contract from Penn Pub Company, and the afternoon mail of the same day, brought in the second contract from Lothrop, Lee and Shepherd in Boston . . . the beginning of her fantastic life as a writer.(95)

Hauck managed to maintain a family home in St. Joseph, actively participate in civic clubs, and write two or three novels and several short stories, book reviews, and articles every year! Her daughter recalled that her mother had many roles: mother, wife, writer, clubwoman, historian, humanitarian in an age where the phrase "Women's place was in the home" was truly believed.(96)

In a Penn Publishing Co., pamphlet, Hauck also discussed her hectic lifestyle:

All this keeps me very busy, of course. I have no time for bridge, or movies, or parties save informal affairs with indulgent friends; but I do have time for good times with my husband and three children, time to work in my flower garden, . . .and to explore a little more deeply each year our own Missouri Ozarks where untouched areas of literary material constantly tempt my typewriter. (97)

Hauck's romantic novels, some based on Missouri history, were written for adults or adolescents under her own name and four pseudonyms: Lane Archer, Peter Ash, Louise Landon, and Jean Randall.

Her daughter recalled that one day a man imposing as Peter Ash showed up at the family home to talk to Louise Platt Hauck. He suddenly realized that he was talking to the real Peter Ash, too! Impostors frequently took her writing names and accepted lecture assignments in her place.

Hauck's novels were extremely popular (many are still circulating in libraries today.) In a pamphlet for her publisher, Penn Publishing Co., (1935) she explained her joy of writing and her prolific output:

Writing is fun!. . . To me it is adventure: Journeying into the fascinating country of the imagination, making burglarious entrance into people's minds, leaving behind the humdrum routine of everyday life. . . .

I served a long apprenticeship to novel writing: five hundred and seventy-eight published short stories written under so many different names that I cannot remember them all now. I recollect that once I picked up a copy of a well-known magazine and found myself represented therein by three short stories, a serial and two poems. . . .(98)

Hauck had begun publishing to support the family around 1915. Her daughter recalled that Hauck's mother, Mrs. Platt, criticized Hauck for writing "trashy pot-boilers," but that these works brought in hundreds of dollars and helped to pay for the college education of Hauck's children. (99)

When the Penn Publishing Company failed in 1941, Edward Dodd of Dodd and Mead personally flew to St. Joseph to secure the publishing rights to Hauck's books.(100)

Hauck died at age fifty-nine in St. Joseph. She had just placed a contract with a newspaper syndicate for publication of condensed versions of her stories.

The Library of Congress in Washington, DC, lists these novels by Hauck (and her pseudonyms). Those indicated with an asterick * are in the archives of the Women Writers Along the Rivers project, the St. Joseph Public Library, and/or the Missouri Western State University Library:

• After a Man's Heart. 1937.
• * Anne Marries Again. 1930.
• At Midnight. 1930.
• Beloved Buff. 1940.
• *Bill Had an Umbrella. 1934.
• * Blackberry Winter. 1934.
• * Blazing Tumbleweed. 1931.
• Careless Rapture. 1943.
• Cary Fordyce. 1943.
• Chan Osborne's Wife. 1938.
• Cherry Pit. 1930.
• Climax. 1938.
• * The Chrystal Tree. 1935.
• Dear Deborah. 1939.
• Evergreen House. 1943.
• * Family Matters. 1934.
• * Friday's Child. 1934.
• Gardenias for Sue. 1942.
• * The Gold Trail. 1929.
• The Green Light. 1931.
• High Junks Ranch. 1927.
• His Own Rooftree. 1933.
• * If With All Your Hearts. 1935.
• In Lilac Time. 1936.
• Joyce. 1927.
• Juliette. 1939.
• Just Like a Girl. 1940.
• Lance Falls in Love 1941.
• * Life, Love and Jeanette. 1933.
• * A Little Aversion. 1934.
• * The Little Doctor. 1936.
• The Little Secretary. 1942.
• Lucky Shot. 1931.
• Maid of Honor. 1936.
• Marise. 1929.
• * Marriage for Rosamond. 1936.
• * May Dust. 1929.
• * Missouri Yesterdays. 1920.
• Mystery Morrison. 1923.
• * Mystery of Tumult Rock, The. 1920.
• * One is Beloved. 1937.
• * Partners. 1929.
• Pepper Tree Inn. 1941.
• Pink House, The. 1933.
• Priscilla Won't. 1939.
• * Prince of the Moon. 1931.
• * Rainbow Glory. 1935.
• Rosaleen. 1930.
• Shortest Street, The. 1937.
• Soft as Silk. 1942.
• * Story of Nancy Meadows, The. 1933.
• * Strange Death of a Doctor, The. 1933.
• * A Sweeter Woman. 1943.
• * Sylvia. 1931.
• Traveler's End. 1943.
• Truce With Life. 1936.
• Two Together. 1932.
• Untarnished. 1931.
• * Whippoorwill House. 1936.
• * Wifehood of Jessica, The. 1932.
• * Wild Grape. 1931.
• * Without Charm, Please!. 1937.
• A Woman Will or Won't. 1942.
• * Youngest Rider: A Story of the Pony Express. 1927.

Footnotes

95 Jean Kotary, Personal letter, 5 Jan. 1982.

96 Ibid.

97 Louise Platt Hauck, "Many Books in Many Moods." Philadephia: Penn Publiching, n.d. (Pamphlet) Both the St. Joseph Public Library and the archives of the Women Writers Along the Rivers project have extensive files of clippings and book reviews about Hauck and her publications.

98 Ibid.

99 Kotary.

100 "Mrs. Hauck, Author of 70 Books, Dies," St. Joseph News- Press, 13 Dec. 1943.

From: Women Writers Along the Rivers 1850-1950

Questions about the MWSU Library Special Collections Room may be directed to Julia Schneider, the Library Director.