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Dolly Parton died on 25 August 2026 in Nashville, at 80, after a short

illness. Her career ran for seven decades, and she spent most of it being

underestimated by people who mistook warmth for simplicity.

She wrote Jolene and I Will Always Love You in a single day. She turned down

Elvis rather than give up half the publishing on the second one, which is

the sort of decision that looks obvious only in hindsight and was not

obvious at all at the time.

Her family have asked that donations be made to Dolly Parton's Imagination

Library instead of flowers.

It posts a free book every month to any child signed up for it, from birth

until they start school. No means test, no paperwork beyond an address. She

started it in 1995 in her home county in Tennessee because her own father

could not read. It has since given away more than 330 million books, and

roughly one child in seven under the age of five in the United States gets

one in the post every month.

That idea - that the thing you need most is a book in your hands, and that

getting it to you should not depend on your postcode or your parents'

income - is not far off why this node exists. A library that works without

a subscription, without an account, and without asking who you are.