Dolly Parton was much more than a "country music icon whose soaring vibrato vocals, poignant songwriting and sparkling costumes defined her rise from a log cabin in the Tennessee mountains to the height of stardom and acclaim," as the Associated Press described her. She was also a "charismatic humanitarian, whose good humor and straightforward generosity lifted the well-being of communities in her home state and beyond. Fans across generations and geographies say it will remain part of Parton's legacy."
The book world was a huge beneficiary of Parton's charitable work. In addition to being an accomplished author, Parton's legacy is permanently enshrined in the Imagination Library, which to date has donated more than 330 million books to children across the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, and Australia. The project was inspired by her father, whom Parton described as a "very smart man," adding that she "often wondered what he could have done had he been able to read and write."
"When I heard that Dolly Parton had died on Tuesday, my first thought wasn't about her music. It was about a child opening a book," Kristy High, who manages the Imagination Library for Cincinnati, Ohio's Hamilton County, wrote for CNBC.
Parton wrote extensively about her own life in Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business (1994); Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics (2020); Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones (2023); Good Lookin' Cookin': A Year of Meals, Moments, and Memories (2024); and Star of the Show: My Life on Stage (2025). She also wrote several children's books, including Coat of Many Colors (1994), I Am a Rainbow (2009), Billy the Kid Makes It Big (2023), and Billy the Kid Comes to Broadway (2024).
Smart Blonde: A Biography of Dolly Parton by music writer Stephen Miller was first published in the U.S. in 2015 and was for a time the only Parton biography for sale in Dollywood. Smart Blonde tracks "Parton's rise from a poor East Tennessee childhood to superstardom in the male-dominated world of 1960s Nashville," and how she "built not only a musical legacy but a multifaceted business empire." Omnibus Press published an updated version of Smart Blonde in July, which features a foreword by music critic David Sinclair.
