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Esther Forbes | |
|---|---|
| Born | Esther Louise Forbes (1891-06-28)June 28, 1891 |
| Died | August 12, 1967(1967-08-12) (aged 76) Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Alma mater | Bradford College |
| Period | 1926–1954 |
| Genre | Children'shistorical novels; biography |
| Notable works | Paul Revere and the World He Lived In Johnny Tremain: A Novel for Young and Adult |
| Spouse | Albert Hoskins (1926–1933) |
Esther Louise Forbes (/fɔːrbz/; June 28, 1891 – August 12, 1967) was an Americannovelist,historian andchildren's writer who received thePulitzer Prize and theNewbery Medal. She was the first woman elected to membership in theAmerican Antiquarian Society.
Esther Forbes was born to William Trowbridge Forbes andHarriette Merrifield Forbes on June 28, 1891, inWestborough, Massachusetts. She moved with her family toWorcester, Massachusetts, in 1898. She attendedBancroft School in Worcester, and, from 1909 to 1912, she attendedBradford Academy,[1] a junior college inBradford, Massachusetts.
In 1916, she joined her older sisters Cornelia and Katherine inMadison, Wisconsin, where Cornelia was in graduate school and Katharine was teaching. During this time she attended the classes at theUniversity of Wisconsin.
While in Wisconsin, she joined the editorial board of theWisconsin Literary Magazine, along with another future Pulitzer Prize winner,Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. In 1919, she returned to Worcester. In late December she began working for the editorial department ofHoughton Mifflin Company in Boston. From 1924 to 1926, she wrote feature articles for theBoston Evening Transcript.
She married Albert L. Hoskins, Jr., an attorney, on January 14, 1926, and left Houghton Mifflin. The couple moved to New York City. Her first novel,O Genteel Lady! was published in 1926 and was selected as the second book for theBook of the Month Club. In 1928A Mirror for Witches was published. In 1933, she and Albert Hoskins divorced. Although she retained her married name, she wrote under her maiden name, Esther Forbes.
Forbes returned to Worcester in 1933, where she lived with her mother and unmarried siblings. At this time, her mother began working closely with Forbes on the research for her novels, often at the local research library, the American Antiquarian Society.
In 1935,Miss Marvel, in 1937Paradise and in 1938,The General's Lady were published. Each of these were historical novels set inNew England from colonial times through the early years of the Republic.
In a break from her fiction, Forbes wrote a definitive biography ofPaul Revere,Paul Revere and the World He Lived In (1942), for which she received the 1943Pulitzer Prize for History.[2] Also in 1943, she received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree fromClark University.
In 1943, her best-known workJohnny Tremain was published, for which she received theNewbery Award in 1944. In 1946,America's Paul Revere was published and in 1947,The Boston Book was published.
In 1947, she received theMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer novel award of $150,000 for her then forthcoming book,The Running of the Tide, published in 1948. In 1949, she was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.[3]Rainbow on the Road was published in 1954. In 1960, Esther Forbes became the first woman elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society.
Forbes died on August 12, 1967, in Worcester, of rheumatic heart disease. Her manuscripts were donated to Clark University in Worcester. The royalties for her historical novels were donated to the American Antiquarian Society,[4] which also has the research notes on her unfinished work on witchcraft in early New England.
Works by or aboutEsther Forbes atWikisource
