Margaret Deland

Margaret Deland
Boston, Massachusetts
Occupation	Writer
Language	English
Nationality	American
Genre	Novel short story poetry autobiography
Literary movement	American Realism
Signature

Margaret Deland (born Margaretta Wade Campbell; February 23, 1857 – January 13, 1945) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet. She also wrote an autobiography in two volumes. She generally is considered part of the literary realism movement.

Biography

Margaretta Wade Campbell was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (today a part of Pittsburgh) on February 23, 1857. Her mother died due to complications from the birth, and she was left in the care of an aunt named Lois Wade and her husband Benjamin Campbell Blake.^[1]

On May 12, 1880, she married Lorin F. Deland. Her husband had inherited his father's publishing company, which he sold in 1886 and worked in advertising.^[1] It was at this period she began to write, first writing verses for her husband's greeting-card business.^[1] Her first poem was published in the March 1885 issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine and her first poetry collection, titled The Old Garden and Other Verses, was published in late 1886 by Houghton Mifflin.^[2] Her novel John Ward, Preacher, her first, was published in 1888.^[2]

Deland and her husband moved to Boston, Massachusetts and, over a four-year span, they took in and supported unmarried mothers at their residence at 76 Mount Vernon Street on Beacon Hill. They also maintained the summer home Greywood, overlooking the Kennebunk River in Kennebunkport, Maine.^[3] It was in this home that Canadian actress Margaret Anglin visited in 1909, and the two women reviewed Deland's manuscript for The Awakening of Helena Richie. Anglin reported "I never spent a pleasanter time than I did while Mrs. Deland and I chugged up and down the little Kennbunkport [sic] River in a boat, talking over the future of Helena Richie."^[4] The Delands kept their summer home in Maine for about 50 years.^[3]

In 1910, Deland wrote an article for the

By 1941, Deland had published 33 books.[3] She died in Boston at the Hotel Sheraton, where she then lived, in 1945.^[8] She is buried at Forest Hills Cemetery. Her home on Mount Vernon Street is a stop on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.^[9]

Critical response

Deland is known principally for the novel John Ward, Preacher (1888), an indictment of

Calvinism, which became a best-seller.^[10] Her 'Old Chester' books, based on her early memories of the Pittsburgh communities where she grew up — including Maple Grove and Manchester — were also popular. She was recognized as an important and popular author of literary realism in the United States, but some of her plots and themes were shocking to some.^[10] In her lifetime, she was called the American Mrs. Humphry Ward and was compared to Elizabeth Gaskell.^[1]

Selected works

Poetry

• The Old Garden and other verses (1886) (Internet Archive e-text)
• The Old Garden with illustrations by Walter Crane (1893)

Novels

• John Ward, Preacher (1888)
• Sidney (1890)
• The Story of a Child (1892)
• Philip and His Wife (1894)
• Dr. Lavendar's People (1903)
• The Awakening of Helena Richie (1906)
• The Way to Peace (1910)
• The Iron Woman (1911)
• The Voice (1912)
• Partners (1913)
• The Hands of Esau (1914)
• The Rising Tide (1916)
• Small Things (1919)
• The Promises of Alice (1919)
• An Old Chester Secret (1920)
• The Vehement Flame (1922)
• The Kays (1926)
• Captain Archer's Daughter (1932)

Short story collections

• Mr. Tommy Dove, and Other Stories (1893)
• The Wisdom of Fools (1897)
• Old Chester Tales (1898)
• The Common Way (1904)
• R.J.'s Mother and Some Other People (1908)
• Around Old Chester (1915)
• Small Things (1919)
• New Friends in Old Chester (1924)
• Old Chester Days (1935)

Autobiography

• If This Be I, as I Suppose It Be (1935)
• Golden Yesterdays (1941)

Other nonfiction

• Florida Days (1889)

Filmography

• The Iron Woman, directed by Carl Harbaugh (1916, based on the novel The Iron Woman)
• The Awakening of Helena Richie, directed by John W. Noble (1916, based on the novel The Awakening of Helena Richie)
• Smouldering Fires, directed by Clarence Brown (1925)

References

1. ^
   ISBN 0674627342
2. ^
   ISBN 978-1-4525-9119-3
3. ^
   ISBN 9780738537504.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
   )
4. ISBN 0-88924-206-2
5. ISBN 0-684-86995-0
6. ^ "First Women Elected to Institute of Arts; Edith Wharton Among the Four Chosen – American Academy Makes Two Men Members," New York Times. November 12, 1926.
7. ISBN 0-19-507408-4
8. ^ "Margaret Deland, Writer, Dies at 87 (abstract)". The New York Times. January 14, 1945. Retrieved June 1, 2010.
9. ^ "Beacon Hill". Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
10. ^
    ISBN 0808404245

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Margaret Deland.

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Margaret Deland

• Works by Margaret Deland at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Margaret Deland at Internet Archive
• "Margaret Deland Archived June 22, 2018, at the Wayback Machine" by Chloe Morse-Harding (2012) at the Boston Athenæum