Mariana

"Mariana (Marian Foster Curtiss), the creator of Miss Flora McFlimsey and her little world of animals and dolls, was born in 1909, in Cleveland, Ohio. Her interest in dolls began in childhood. She had a dollhouse that was big enough to walk into, in the yard of her family's Victorian house. Old toys and dolls fascinated her all her life, and over the years she acquired an extensive collection.As an adult, she lived and worked in a studio on Madison Avenue, in New York City in the fall, winter and spring. She spent her summers in a charming little house in Wainscott, Long Island. During her lifetime she received many letter from boys and girls about Miss Flora McFlimsey. She also received many letters from grandmothers and great-grandmothers who remembered the nineteenth-century poem by William Allen Butler about the original Miss Flora McFlimsey, which was her inspiration for the Miss Flora stories. Mariana died at her home on Long Island in 1978." (from dust-jacket blurb)