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Jim is a New England writer/publisher who was most active in the White Mountains of New Hampshire 1980-2010. In retirement, he writes about Eleanor H. Porter.

In 1983, Jim ran a story about Eleanor in Magnetic North Magazine which he founded and edited. He discovered an affection for this New Hampshire woman, along with a writer’s curiosity about her career

He poked around EHP’s correspondence at Dartmouth and was charmed by her candor and wit. Finally, when more of Eleanor’s books were online (most are free at Gutenberg.org), he read them all. He found her and her husband John in the US Census and knew exactly where she had lived in Cambridge, Mass. because he often visited a friend, Peter Scheinfelt, who lived a few doors down.

The Eames family, Littleton businesspeople and philanthropists, commissioned a statue of Pollyanna which has become a landmark and finally gives Eleanor a measure of recognition in the town of her birth. He promoted the sculpture, in a biweekly paper he published at the time, The Ammonoosuc Times.

His intention in publishing The Beldingsville Beacon is two-fold. He wants to entertain people who have any interest in Pollyanna or Eleanor, and also to make a record of EHP’s writing career in the hope that these stories inspire a more ambitious writer-cum-scholar.

The Beldingville Beacon was not intended to be such a big project. When it started there wasn’t much about EHP between libraries and the internet. Around 2010, however, the internet accumulated endless links and documents. Eleanor is Jim’s hobby.

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