Phyllis McGinley was an American author of children's books and poetry.
24 Facts About Phyllis McGinley
2.
Phyllis McGinley's poetry was in the style of light verse, specializing in humor, satiric tone and the positive aspects of suburban life.
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Phyllis McGinley was born March 21,1905, in Ontario, Oregon, the daughter of Daniel and Julia Kiesel McGinley.
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Phyllis McGinley's father was a land speculator and her mother a pianist.
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Phyllis McGinley's family moved to a ranch near Iliff, Colorado, when she was only three months old.
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Phyllis McGinley didn't enjoy her early childhood on the ranch, where she and her brother felt isolated and friendless.
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Phyllis McGinley's father died when she was 12 years old, and the family moved to Utah to live with a widowed aunt.
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Phyllis McGinley studied at the University of Southern California and musical theater at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where she was a Kappa Kappa Gamma, graduating in 1927.
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Phyllis McGinley held an assortment of jobs there, including copywriter for an advertising agency, teacher in a junior high school in New Rochelle, and staff writer for Town and Country.
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In 1956, Phyllis McGinley published a rhymed children's story called "The Year Without a Santa Claus" in Good Housekeeping magazine, and the piece generated enough positive interest to facilitate its being printed in book form the following year.
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An ardent Roman Catholic, Phyllis McGinley embraced domesticity in the wake of second-wave feminism, wrote light verse in the wake of the rise of modern avant-garde and confessional poetry, and filled the gap between the housewife and the feminist intellectual who rejected the domestic life.
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Phyllis McGinley felt that the capability to foster familial relationships was what gave women their power, and she fought to defend their rights to do so.
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Phyllis McGinley both admired the housewife and her duties and fully recognized the monotony and drudgery that went along with this role.
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Phyllis McGinley felt that, no matter what path a woman chose to follow, the most important thing was for a woman to recognize and acknowledge her unique and honorable place in life, and that a woman who enjoyed herself as a wife and mother should not submit to imposed ambitions or feel constrained to demand change in the institution of the church Phyllis McGinley cherished.
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The Plain Princess by Phyllis McGinley is the coming-of-age story of Esmeralda, who learns to shed her elitist disposition and becomes a humble and caring princess.
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The many manuscript drafts of Phyllis McGinley's writings reveal her method of composition for various works.
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Suburbia and sainthood are the prominent topics of Phyllis McGinley's writing, together with occasional pieces produced for various holidays, especially Christmas.
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Phyllis McGinley has been criticized for providing readers with transient humor but not actually effecting any change.
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Betty Friedan has said that Phyllis McGinley was a good craftsman but did nothing to improve or change the lives of housewives.
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Phyllis McGinley was the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize in 1961 for her book Times Three.
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Phyllis McGinley was the first to be awarded the poetry prize for a collection of light verse.
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Phyllis McGinley was elected to the National Academy of Arts and Letters in 1955.
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Phyllis McGinley received a number of honorary Doctor of Letters degrees as well as the Catholic Book Club's Campion Award, the Catholic Institute of the Press Award, and the Laetare Medal, conferred by the University of Notre Dame in 1964.
24.
Phyllis McGinley won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for her light verse collection, Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades with Seventy New Poems.