It seemed a little sadistic when I reread it.' But, she added: 'I did identify with her. 'That's the kind of upbringing I didn't have,' Ms. Bear says he will stay forever, but Edith's anxiety resurfaces in later books.) A spanking follows, and Edith cries, terrified that the bears will go away and leave her alone again. Bear returns to find Edith and Little Bear playing dress-up, complete with lipstick, jewelry, high heels and a cheeky message about Mr. The book's climax - and one reason modern mothers may be of two minds about reading it to their daughters - occurs when Mr. The first, and best-known, title introduces Edith, who lives desperately alone in a grand New York mansion, and who one day finds that two teddy bears, apparently father and son, have come to live with her. She not only wrote the books but also took their black-and-white photographs, suffused with melancholy. Wright styled the doll, named Edith, after herself, down to its blond ponytail and gold hoop earrings.

Wright's unwholesomely close relationships with her mother and brother, and also shows that she bore a resemblance to the heroine of her books.

The new book, 'The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright' (Henry Holt) by Jean Nathan, details Ms. Now back in print, the book and two of its sequels are enjoying a bittersweet renaissance, fueled by a new biography of their author, Dare Wright. Many women - artistic women in particular - have discovered that they share this intense ambivalence, part warm and fuzzy nostalgia, part chilling discomfort, about 'The Lonely Doll,' first published in 1957. 'Yet there's something about the images that haunted me, something so compelling.'

'I wanted to share it with her, but I found it too depressing,' she said. Gordon said, 'I was struck by how creepy it is.' Gordon, whose husband and fellow band member, Thurston Moore, found one of the books, and, curious about it, took it home.

She rediscovered a favorite series of childhood books, 'The Lonely Doll,' and thought about reading them to her 7-year-old daughter, Coco. But a few years ago she had an experience many women her age could relate to. YOU might think that Kim Gordon, the bass player and singer of the eternally hip downtown band Sonic Youth, would not have much in common with mothers of a more conventional stripe.

Book the lonely doll