One of the more notable figures in 20th-century Arkansas literature is Charlie May Hogue Lowenstein Simon Fletcher, known as Charlie May Simon, an award-winning author who excelled in children’s literature, autobiographies, and biographies.
Growing up in the Delta
On August 17, 1897, Simon was born on a family farm in Drew County, Arkansas, the edge of the Mississippi Delta, to Charles Wayman Hogue, a schoolteacher, and Mary Gill Hogue, a homemaker.
In 1901, the father moved his young family to Memphis, Tennessee, when Simon was four-years-old. Though the family were now Memphians, Simon reported that they often went back to Arkansas for family holidays and reunions. Simon stated that her happiest memories were those days with the extended family in Arkansas.
In 1910, at the age 13, she began to explore her literacy talents and submitted her first novel to a publisher, which was rejected. Discouraged, she abandoned writing and turned her attention to the study of art.
A Rocky Crossing
Walter Lowenstein was a gateway to Simon's art ambitions. She married him in 1918 at the age of 21. Lowenstein was the son of the Memphis-department-store Lowensteins, therefore Simon had entered a wealthy family. Lowenstein died seven years into their marriage, leaving Simon a sizable fortune that allowed her to study art at the Chicago Art Institute and Le Grande Chaumiere in Paris. In 1926, the young widow met and married artist Howard Simon in Paris. Shortly thereafter, the Simons moved to San Francisco, where in 1928 Howard Simon held an art exhibit of his works, and Charlie May allegedly studied at Stanford University San Francisco. In 1931, during the height of the Great Depression, the impoverished young couple found themselves in a Greenwich Village apartment in New York City. Howard suggested to Charlie May that they move to Arkansas "to a cabin of our own," and she enthusiastically agreed.
Around 1931, the Simons moved to Rocky Crossing in Perry County (also known as Possum Trot) and lived there until 1935. During this time period, Simon achieved literacy success with her 1933 article "Retreat to Land: An Experience in Poverty" and her 1934 children's book, Robin on the Mountain.
Charlie May met John Gould Fletcher in February 1934, as Fletcher was determined to meet the woman who wrote about rural Arkansas. Their meeting resulted in a mutual attraction and ultimately a love affair as documented in the Charlie May Simon Papers. Two years later, Simon and Fletcher divorces their spouses, Howard Simon and Florence "Daisy" Arbuthnot, and married on January 18, 1936. Interestingly, Howard Simon continues to illustrate Charlie May's works after their divorce, and Charlie May kept her Simon last name for professional reasons.
The Fletcher couple lived a full life together of travel, writing, and entertaining their friends at their home Johnswood. Charlie May wrote several children's books during this marriage, and Fletcher won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1939. Yet the couple also struggled with Fletcher's mental illness, when Simon was forced to commit Fletcher to a Memphis sanitarium in November 1944. Tragically, Fletcher committed suicide in a pond near their home in 1950.
An Honored Arkansan
In 1971, the Arkansas Department of Education honored Simon with the establishment of the Charlie May Simon Children's Book Award that is given each year by Arkansas's fourth, fifth, and sixth-grade students. In 1974, Simon published her last book, the autobiography Faith Has Need of All the Truth: A Life of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the same year that Little Rock citizens honored her deceased husband with the opening of the John Gould Fletcher branch of the Little Rock Public Library, now the Central Arkansas Library System.
Charlie May Simon died in Little Rock, Arkansas, on March 21, 1977, at the age of 79. She was buried in Little Rock's Mount Holly Cemetery.
Charlie May Simon Papers, UALR.MS.0006, Center for Arkansas History and Culture, Little Rock.
Ellis-Courtemanche, Anne. "Charlie May Hogue Fletcher (Charlie May Simon) 1897-1977." Arkansas Libraries vol. 34, no. 2 (June 1977): 18-23.
Irwin, Teresa Joyce. "Something of Martha and Mary Combined: Charlie May Simon and Her Two Autobiographies." Arkansas Libraries vol. 36, no. 4 (Dec. 1979): 25-28.
Isom, Toran. "Charlie May Simon," Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=41 (accessed February 26, 2018).
Lampkin, Sheilla. "Charlie May Simon: Drew County Author." Drew County Historical Journal vol. 18 (2003): 34-35.
UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture. "John Gould Fletcher." Character Collection, https://ualrexhibits.org/characters/confederate-ghosts-to-yankee-brahmins-jgf-1/ (accessed February 26, 2018).
Kaye Lundgren is an archival assistant at UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture.