Hildegarde Dolson Lockridge

Hildegarde was born and raised in Franklin, Pennsylvania, the oldest of four children born to Clifford and Katherine Dolson.[1] From 1926 to 1929 she attended Allegheny College, in Meadville, Pennsylvania, but left at the beginning of her senior year to live in New York City. She would later joke: "The day I arrived in New York, in October 1929, the stock market crashed with a bang."[1]

After holding down numerous jobs, Dolson found work as an advertising copywriter for Gimbels, Macy's, Franklin-Simon, and Bamberger stores.[2] She sold her first manuscript to The New Yorker,[1] and was later published in other major magazines, including Harper's, Ladies Home Journal, McCall's, and Reader's Digest. After her first book was published in 1938, Dolson became a full-time freelance writer.[2]

Dolson once wrote "I'm a self-made spinster who crows too much about it, especially when I get paid by the word."[3] She had at least one article published on the subject of why she should never marry.[4]

In 1965, when she was 56, she met mystery writer Richard Lockridge, and Lockridge quickly decided he wanted to marry her.[5] Dolson loved her Greenwich Village apartment,[6] and Mr. Lockridge lived in the country. He had two beloved Siamese cats, and she preferred dogs.[5]

Despite the obstacles, within a few months of their first meeting Lockridge and Miss Dolson married in May 1965.[7] Lockridge would refer to Hildegarde as either Hildy, or The Lady.[5]

Hildegarde Dolson Lockridge died on January 15, 1981, at St. Luke's Hospital in Columbus, North Carolina. She was 72 years old, and had been living in Tyron, North Carolina.[8]

• How About a Man, 1938
• We Shook the Family Tree, 1946
• The Husband Who Ran Away, 1948
• The Form Divine, 1951
• Sorry To Be So Cheerful, 1955
• My Brother Adlai (with Elizabeth Stevenson), 1956
• A Growing Wonder, 1957
• The Great Oildorado: The Gaudy & Turbulent Years of the First Oil Rush: Pennsylvania 1859–1880, 1959
• William Penn, Quaker Hero, 1961
• Guess Whose Hair I'm Wearing, 1963
• Adventures of a Light-Headed Blonde, 1964
• Disaster at Johnstown, The Great Flood, 1965
• Open the Door, 1966
• Heat Lightning, 1970
• To Spite Her Face, 1971
• A Dying Fall, 1973
• Please Omit Funeral, 1975
• Beauty Sleep, 1977
• "How Beautiful With Mud", 1978