Elizabeth Coatsworth


Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth was an American writer of fiction and poetry for children and adults. She won the 1931 Newbery Medal from the American Library Association award recognizing The [Cat Who Went to Heaven] as the previous year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children." In 1968 she was a highly commended runner-up for the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award for children's writers.

Life

Elizabeth Coatsworth was born on May 31, 1893, to Ida Reid and William T. Coatsworth, a prosperous grain merchant in Buffalo, New York. She attended Buffalo Seminary, a private girls' school, and spent summers with her family on Lake Erie's Canadian shore. She began traveling as a child, visiting the Alps and Egypt at age five. Coatsworth graduated from Vassar College in 1915 as salutatorian. In 1916 she received a Master of Arts from Columbia University. She then traveled to eastern Asia, riding horseback through the Philippines, exploring Indonesia and China, and sleeping in a Buddhist monastery. Her travels influenced her writing.
In 1929, she married writer Henry Beston, with whom she had two daughters, Margaret and Catherine. They lived in Hingham, Massachusetts, and at Chimney Farm in Nobleboro, Maine. Her daughter, Kate Barnes, also became an accomplished writer and was named the first Poet Laureate of Maine.
Coatsworth died at her home in Nobleboro on August 31, 1986. Her papers are held in the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota and at Bowdoin College, with a small archive from late in her career in the de Grummond Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi. There is also a collection of her papers at the Maine Women Writers' Collection at the University of New England in Portland, Maine.

Career

Coatsworth began her career publishing her poetry in magazines. Her first book was a poetry collection for adults, Fox Footprints. A conversation with her friend Louise Seaman, who had just founded the United States' first children's book publishing department at Macmillan, led Coatsworth to write her first children's book, The Cat and the Captain. In 1930 she published The Cat Who Went to Heaven. The story of an artist who is painting a picture of the Buddha for a group of monks, it won the Newbery Medal for "the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children".
Nineteenth-Century Children's Writers says "Coatsworth reached her apogee in her nature writing, notably The Incredible Tales". These four books were published for adults in the 1950s. They tell the story of the Perdrys, a family living in the forests of northern Maine who may not be entirely human.
Coatsworth had a long career, publishing over 90 books from 1910 to 1976.

Selected works

For children

;Sally series
The five historical novels featuring "Sally" were all illustrated by Helen Sewell and published by Macmillan US.
  • Away Goes Sally, 1934
  • Five Bushel Farm, 1938
  • The Fair American,1940
  • The White Horse, 1942
  • The Wonderful Day, 1946

For adults

;Novels
;The Incredible Tales
  • The Enchanted, Pantheon, 1951
  • Silky: An Incredible Tale, Pantheon, 1953
  • Mountain Bride: An Incredible Tale, Pantheon 1954
  • The White Room, Pantheon, 1958
;Poetry
  • Fox Footprints, Knopf, 1923, poetry
  • Country Poems, Macmillan, 1942
  • The Creaking Stair, Coward McCann, 1949
;Other
  • The Sun's Diary: A Book of Days for Any Year, Macmillan, 1929
  • Country Neighborhood, Macmillan, 1945
  • Maine Ways, Macmillan, 1947
  • Especially Maine: The Natural World of Henry Beston from Cape Cod to the St. Lawrence;, Stephen Greene, 1970
  • Personal Geography: Almost an Autobiography, Stephen Greene, 1976