"Amelia Earhart: A Biography" Rich Collection

This collection consists of material collected and organized by Doris L. Rich during research in preparation for her 1989 book, Amelia Earhart: A Biography. Materials include reproductions of newspapers, books, periodicals, correspondence, and typed/handwritten notes by Rich.

Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) in 1928 was the first woman to fly (as a passenger) across the Atlantic, and in 1932 the first woman (and second person, after Charles Lindbergh) to fly solo and nonstop across that ocean. She flew many record flights, published several books, and accomplished much for women in aviation before attempting, on June 1, 1937, an around-the-world flight from Miami, Florida, in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra. She and navigator Frederick J. Noonan were flying from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island when they disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937. An exhaustive sea and air search, ordered by President Franklin Roosevelt, was unsuccessful in locating Earhart and Noonan. Doris L. Rich (1920-2009) was a freelance journalist and photographer in Hong Kong from 1949 to 1967. She taught English in Bangladesh and Ghana before moving to Washington, DC in the late 1970s. Her first book, Amelia Earhart: A Biography, was published by the Smithsonian Press in 1989. In the book, Rich downplays Earhart's disappearance and instead focuses on Earhart's many contributions to the aviation field and her championing of women's rights. The book was proclaimed one of the Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times in 1990 and served as the basis for Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight, a made-for-television movie in 1994.