Lloyd Chudley Alexander was an American author of more than 40 books, primarily fantasy novels for children and young adults.
59 Facts About Lloyd Alexander
2.
Over his seven-decade career, Alexander wrote 48 books, and his work has been translated into 20 languages.
3.
Lloyd Alexander won US National Book Awards in 1971 and 1982.
4.
Lloyd Alexander developed a passion for reading books and writing poetry.
5.
Lloyd Alexander attended college for only one term, believing that there was nothing more college could teach him.
6.
Lloyd Alexander enlisted in the United States Army and rose to be a staff sergeant in intelligence and counter-intelligence.
7.
Lloyd Alexander met his wife while he was stationed in France and studied French literature at the University of Paris.
8.
Lloyd Alexander was nominated twice for the international Hans Christian Andersen Award, and received the 1971 National Book Award for Children's Books for The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian and the 1982 National Book Award for Westmark.
9.
Lloyd Alexander received three lifetime achievement awards before his death in 2007.
10.
Lloyd Alexander was born in Philadelphia on January 30,1924, to Edna and Alan Audley Lloyd Alexander, and grew up in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, a section of Upper Darby, just west of the city.
11.
Lloyd Alexander taught himself to read around age four and skipped grades one and two at a private Quaker school.
12.
Lloyd Alexander read Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain and myths, especially King Arthur.
13.
Passionate about writing, Lloyd Alexander believed he could preach and worship God through his writing and his art.
14.
Lloyd Alexander's parents found him a job as a bank messenger, which inspired a satire that would become his first book published fifteen years later, And Let the Credit Go.
15.
Lloyd Alexander graduated at age sixteen in 1940 from Upper Darby High School, where he was inducted into the school's Wall of Fame in 1995.
16.
Lloyd Alexander attended West Chester State Teachers College, which he left after only one term because he did not find the curriculum rigorous enough.
17.
Lloyd Alexander decided that adventure was a better school for a writer than college and enlisted in the US Army during World War II.
18.
Lloyd Alexander was too clumsy with artillery to be sent to the front, and the sight of blood made him faint, making him unfit to work as a medic.
19.
Lloyd Alexander had the opportunity to study the French language, politics, customs, and geography at Lafayette College through the army.
20.
Lloyd Alexander was later moved to Camp Ritchie, Maryland, to receive specialized intelligence training in the United States Army Combat Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Corps.
21.
Lloyd Alexander rose to be a staff sergeant in the corps.
22.
Lloyd Alexander was stationed in Wales and England briefly and then was assigned to the 7th army in eastern France where he translated radio messages for six months.
23.
Lloyd Alexander called Eluard on the phone and showed him his English translations of Eluard's work.
24.
Lloyd Alexander contacted Gertrude Stein, who advised him that becoming a writer was a difficult and discouraging process.
25.
Lloyd Alexander continued to write diligently, though no publishers bought his novels for seven years.
26.
Lloyd Alexander's breakthrough came with his novel And Let the Credit Go, his first autobiographical work in which he focused on his experience as a bank messenger in his adolescence.
27.
Lloyd Alexander wrote his second novel, My Five Tigers, about his cats, continuing the trend of writing about subjects familiar to him.
28.
Lloyd Alexander found work as a copyeditor and a cartoonist where he finished his last four adult publications.
29.
Lloyd Alexander wrote two semi-autobiographical novels: Janine is French and My Love Affair with Music.
30.
Lloyd Alexander co-authored Park Avenue Vet with Louis Camuti, who specialized in treating cats.
31.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals subsequently commissioned their history, which Lloyd Alexander wrote as Fifty Years in the Doghouse.
32.
Lloyd Alexander later called it "the most creative and liberating experience of my life".
33.
Lloyd Alexander was particularly fascinated with Welsh mythology, especially the Mabinogion.
34.
Lloyd Alexander signed a book deal with Henry Holt and Company for a trilogy called The Sons of Llyr.
35.
Lloyd Alexander resisted simplifying the Welsh names, stating that they gave the book a certain mood and strangeness.
36.
Lloyd Alexander wrote two spin-off children's books from the Prydain series, Coll and His White Pig and The Truthful Harp.
37.
Lloyd Alexander won the Newbery Medal for The High King in 1969.
38.
Lloyd Alexander published two picture books: The King's Fountain, for which he collaborated with the author Ezra Jack Keats, and The Four Donkeys.
39.
Lloyd Alexander wrote the novel The Cat Who Wished to be a Man in 1973.
40.
Lloyd Alexander helped create the children's literary magazine Cricket and served on its editorial board.
41.
Lloyd Alexander served on the library committee of World Book Encyclopedia in 1974 and in the board of directors in the Friends of the International Board on Books for Young People in 1982.
42.
Lloyd Alexander maintained a rigorous working schedule, awakening at 4 am and working until the late afternoon, afterwards enjoying his sole meal with his wife.
43.
Lloyd Alexander adhered to this routine even when he did not feel inspired, stating that he could not rely on inspiration alone.
44.
Lloyd Alexander corresponded with fans, who on occasion visited him in his home.
45.
Lloyd Alexander died on May 17,2007, of cancer, a few weeks after the death of his wife of sixty-one years.
46.
Lloyd Alexander was survived by his five step-grandchildren and five step-great-grandchildren.
47.
Lloyd Alexander is buried at Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill.
48.
Lloyd Alexander described his own writings as based on myth, but written with his personal life experience, or "micromythology".
49.
Lloyd Alexander noted that in Welsh culture, Taran's knowledge and nationalism are more important than his non-noble family status.
50.
Lloyd Alexander's works are usually coming-of-age novels in fantasy settings where characters fulfill quests.
51.
Lloyd Alexander's works are fundamentally optimistic about human nature, with endings that are hopeful rather than tragic.
52.
Lloyd Alexander stated that in his fantasy world, "good is ultimately stronger than evil" and "courage, justice, love, and mercy actually function".
53.
Lloyd Alexander himself remarked that his "own concerns and questions" still came out in his fiction.
54.
Lloyd Alexander consciously used fantasy stories as a way to understand reality.
55.
Lloyd Alexander strove to create women characters who were more than a passive trophy for the hero.
56.
Lloyd Alexander's secrecy is only vital to make Eilonwy a helpless victim, which will allow Taran to rescue her.
57.
Lloyd Alexander wrote another biography for the Jewish Publication Society on Aaron Lopez.
58.
Lloyd Alexander first garnered significant critical acclaim with his The Chronicles of Prydain series.
59.
In 2003, Lloyd Alexander received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.