Minnesota History Quarterly

"My Own Mind and Pen" Charles Lindbergh, Autobiography, and Memory

by Brian Horrigan
Spring 2002 (Volume 58, Number 1, pgs. 2-15)

Notes

  1. C. A. Lindbergh to Eva Lindbergh Christie, undated (ca. 1922), Charles A. Lindbergh and Family Papers, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul. On his college papers, see his commentary on Lindbergh, the Lone Eagle, Charles A. Lindbergh Papers, series V, Yale University Library, Manuscripts and Archives, New Haven. Lindbergh's youthful journals, some flight logs, photo albums, and the map of his travels are in the MHS collections.
  2. The 16-part series, "Lindbergh's Own Story," ran from May 23 to June 14, 1927.
  3. "Lindbergh Works Hard to Complete his Book," New York Times, July 2, 1927; Lindbergh, "Comments on re-reading `We,'" 1971, Lindbergh papers, series V, Yale. Lindbergh's handwritten manuscript and the rejected galleys are in the Lindbergh Manuscript Collection, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis.
  4. Leon Whipple, "Lindbergh Writes His Log," The Survey, Oct. 1, 1927, p. 5o; "Icarus Triumphant," Saturday Review of Literature, Aug. 6, 1927, p. 22-23.
  5. Grace Lee Nute correspondence, Lindbergh papers, MHS. Nute never completed the biography.
  6. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, North to the Orient (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1935), and Listen! the Wind (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1938).
  7. Unpublished fragment, Dec. 1938, Lindbergh papers, series V, Yale.
  8. Lindbergh to WilliamJovanovich, Dec. 18, 1969, in The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), xiii. In the late 1960s Jovanovich persuaded Lindbergh to prepare the journals for publication. When transcribed, they totaled more than 3,000 typewritten pages. The Wartime Journals is still a thousand-page tome.
  9. Of Flight and Life (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948), 50-51, 56.
  10. Scribner to Lindbergh, Nov. 30, 1950, Lindbergh papers, series I, Yale.
  11. Charles A. Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis (1953; reprint, St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1993), xv.
  12. The Spirit of St. Louis Collection, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
  13. Spirit, xvi; J. H. Wheelock to Lindbergh, Apr. 1, 1952, Lindbergh papers, series I, Yale.
  14. Spirit collection, Library of Congress.
  15. Here and below, Spirit, 389-90.
  16. Lauren D. Lyman, "How Lindbergh Wrote a Book," The Beehive (United Aircraft in-house magazine), Summer 1954, p. 19.
  17. "The Doom of Heroes," New Yorker, Sept. 19, 1953, p. 110-13.
  18. Spirit, 501; Wheelock to Lindbergh, July 2, 1952, June 3, 1953, Lindbergh papers, series I, Yale.
  19. Lindbergh would eventually write a few tersely worded pages about the kidnapping, which were included in the posthumous Autobiography of Values. The Lindbergh papers at Yale University Library contain many files of this later material, most of it called "Autobiography-untitled." See also introduction to Autobiography of Values and Judith Schiff, "The Literary Lindbergh Is Celebrated at Yale," Yale Alumni Magazine and Journal 15 (Apr. 1977): 14-22.
  20. Autobiography, 122-28, 396.
  21. The most extensive collection of these commentaries is in the Lindbergh papers at Yale; copies of some are in the Library of Congress and the Minnesota Historical Society.
  22. Bruce Larson, Lindbergh of Minnesota: A Political Biography (New York. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973)
  23. Unpublished fragment, Dec. 1938, Lindbergh papers, series V, Yale.
  24. Lindbergh to Ray Fredette, Dec. 4, 1972, Lindbergh papers, series X, Yale.
  25. Spirit, xv-xvi.