Lindbergh, Anne Spencer Morrow

▪ 2002

      American writer and aviator (b. June 22, 1906, Englewood, N.J.—d. Feb. 7, 2001, Passumpsic, Vt.), was perhaps best known as the wife of Charles (“Lucky Lindy”) Lindbergh—the pilot who had made (1927) the first solo transatlantic flight—and the mother of the 20-month-old baby whose kidnapping and subsequent murder in 1932 was sensationalized in the press and labeled the “crime of the century.” In her own right, however, she was a renowned pilot and the author of a number of popular books of fiction, diaries, and poetry. Her best-known work, Gift from the Sea (1955)—a series of meditative essays on the struggle, especially by women, to achieve balance and serenity in life—sold more than five million copies in its first 20 years in print. Lindbergh met her husband when he was her family's guest during the Christmas 1927 season. She graduated from Smith College, Northampton, Mass., in 1928, and the couple were married the following year. Lindbergh took up flying herself and in 1930 became the first woman in the U.S. to be granted a glider pilot's license. She became her husband's co-pilot, navigator, and radio operator and in 1930 helped him set a new transcontinental speed record of 14 hours 45 minutes from Los Angeles to New York City. In 1931 they made a three-month-long journey to survey air routes over Canada and Alaska to East Asia, and that trip later became the subject of Lindbergh's first book, North to the Orient (1935), which was an instant success. Lindbergh solidified her reputation with her second book, Listen! The Wind (1938), which recounted a 1933–34 survey of transatlantic air routes. The excessive attention surrounding their first son's kidnap-murder and the trial and death sentence of accused killer Bruno Hauptmann, as well as threats made on the life of their second son, had prompted the family to move to England in 1935, and they remained in Europe until the eve of World War II. Lindbergh's controversial next book, The Wave of the Future, a Confession of Faith (1940), supported the isolationist stance her husband was taking and diminished her popularity for a time, but her first novel, The Steep Ascent (1944), was well received, and Gift from the Sea spent many weeks on the best-seller list. Later works included The Unicorn, and Other Poems, 1935–1955 (1956) and her five volumes of diaries covering the years 1922–44: Bring Me a Unicorn (1972), Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead (1973), Locked Rooms and Open Doors (1974), The Flower and the Nettle (1976), and War Within and Without (1980).

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