11 Facts About Evangeline Walton

Evangeline Walton was the pen name of Evangeline Wilna Ensley, an American writer of fantasy fiction.

Evangeline Walton suffered chronic respiratory illnesses as a child, and was privately or self-taught at home.

Evangeline Walton and her mother traveled often to New York City, Chicago and San Francisco for opera, especially for Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen; opera was a passion her entire life.

Evangeline Walton worked on her best known work, the Mabinogion tetralogy, during the late 1930s and early 1940s, and her Theseus trilogy during the late 1940s.

Evangeline Walton corresponded with the British novelist, essayist and poet John Cowper Powys for many years.

Evangeline Walton was first cousin to Clifford C Furnas, author of The Next Hundred Years, Assistant Secretary of War in the Eisenhower administration, co-founder of NASA and chancellor of SUNY Buffalo; and to Clifton J Furness, professor of music and author of The Genteel Female: An Anthology.

Evangeline Walton is best known for her four novels retelling the Welsh Mabinogi.

Evangeline Walton published her first volume in 1936 under the publisher's title of The Virgin and the Swine.

In 1983, Evangeline Walton published The Sword Is Forged, the first of a planned Theseus trilogy.

Evangeline Walton had completed the trilogy in the late 1940s but the publication by Mary Renault of her Theseus novels in 1958 and 1962 kept Evangeline Walton from publishing her own.

Evangeline Walton wrote seven unpublished novels, several volumes of unpublished short stories, poems and a verse play.