Margery Williams Popular Books

Margery Williams Biography & Facts

Margery Williams Bianco (22 July 1881 – 4 September 1944) was an English-American author, primarily of popular children's books. A professional writer since the age of nineteen, she achieved lasting fame at forty-one with the 1922 publication of the classic that is her best-known work, The Velveteen Rabbit. She received the Newbery Honor for Winterbound. Early life and education Margery Winifred Williams was born in London in 1881, the second daughter of a noted barrister and a renowned classical scholar, Robert Williams and Florence Williams née Harper. She and her sister were encouraged by her father, whom she remembered as a deeply loving and caring parent, to read and use their imaginations. Writing about her childhood many years later, she recalled how vividly her father described characters from various books and the infinite world of knowledge and adventure that lay on the printed page. She noted that the desire to read, which soon transformed into a need to write, was a legacy from her father that would be hers for a lifetime.When Margery was seven years old, her father died suddenly, a life-changing event which, in one way or another, would affect all of her future creative activity. The undertone of sadness and the themes of death and loss that flow through her children's books have been criticised by some reviewers, but Williams always maintained that hearts acquire greater humanity through pain and adversity. She wrote that life is a process of constant change—there are departures for some and arrivals for others—and the process allows us to grow and persevere. In 1890 Margery moved with her family to the United States. A year later they moved to a rural Pennsylvania farming community. Over the succeeding years, until 1898, Margery was a student at the Convent School in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania. Her ambition to make a living as an author propelled her in 1901, at the age of nineteen, to return to her birthplace and submit to a London publisher her first novel, The Late Returning, which was published in 1902 and aimed at an adult audience. It did not sell well and neither did her subsequent novels, The Price of Youth, and The Bar. Marriage, children and the influence of Walter de la Mare's writings While visiting her publisher, Margery Williams met Francesco Bianco, an Italian living in London, who was employed as the manager of one of the book departments. They were married in 1904 and became the parents of a son, Cecco and a daughter, Pamela. Pamela was a renowned child artist who had a showing in Turin at the age of eleven. Her fame brought the Bianco family to New York and (with the exception of Cecco) they lived in the Greenwich Village area until the end of their lives. Pamela illustrated some of her mother's books, including The Skin Horse and The Little Wooden Doll. When her children were young, Margery considered motherhood a full-time job, and her writing efforts were curtailed.In 1907 the family left England, heading first to Paris, where Francesco was head of the rare books department at Brentano's. They later settled in Turin, Italy. In August 1914 Italy, along with the rest of Europe, was plunged into World War I and Francesco Bianco joined the Italian Army. While remaining home with the children, Margery Bianco gained hope and inspiration from the works of the poet she called her "spiritual mentor", Walter de la Mare, who she felt truly understood the mindset of children.In 1914, Williams wrote a horror novel, The Thing in the Woods, about a werewolf in the Pennsylvania region. It was later republished in the US in a slightly revised version under the pseudonym Harper Williams. The Thing in the Woods was known to H. P. Lovecraft, and some commentators think it may have influenced his "The Dunwich Horror". He also wrote a poem entitled "On The Thing in the Woods by Harper Williams." Return to America and The Velveteen Rabbit At the end of 1918 the Great War had ended, but postwar hunger and deprivation became a problem in Europe. In 1921, Bianco, along with her family, returned to the United States and settled in Greenwich Village. Inspired by the innocence and playful imagination of her children, as well as the inspiration she felt from the magic and mysticism contained in the works of Walter de la Mare, she decided to resume her writing, and gained almost immediate celebrity. The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real was Margery Williams Bianco's first American work, and it remains her most famous. It has remained a classic piece of literature through numerous adaptations in children's theatre as well as on radio, television and in the movies. The author's trademark undercurrents of sentimentality and sadness persist in the tale of a small boy who finds a velveteen rabbit in his Christmas stocking. In the nursery the rabbit is looked down on by the fancier wind-up toys. He asks the skin horse, "What is Real?" The skin horse tells him, "When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." The boy comes to adore the rabbit, and they are constant companions. This happy existence continues until the boy contracts scarlet fever. The rabbit stays with him, whispering to him of the games they will play again when he is better. As the boy gets better his family prepares to take him to the seaside. Although the rabbit looks forward to the seaside very much, the doctor insists he be thrown out and burned along with the other toys that may be infected. While the rabbit is waiting to be burned, he cries a real tear, from which a fairy emerges. The fairy tells the rabbit that he was real to the boy, because the boy loved him, but now she will make him truly real. Later, the boy sees a real rabbit in the garden. He thinks it looks like his old rabbit, but he does not know that it really is the velveteen rabbit he once loved. Successful author of children's books Bianco wrote numerous other children's books, with her son becoming the namesake of one of them, 1925's Poor Cecco: The Wonderful Story of a Wonderful Wooden Dog Who Was the Jolliest Toy in the House Until He Went Out to Explore the World, about the interactions of children's toys with each other and with the human, animal, and toy members of the world beyond the toy cupboard. A return to more sober themes marks Bianco's other popular works, such as the same year's The Little Wooden Doll, illustrated by her daughter Pamela, in which the title character is badly mistreated by some children, but shown love and compassion by another child, which made her whole again. Each year, for the remaining two decades of her life, Bianco produced numerous books and short stories. Most of them continued her preoccupation with toys coming to life and the ability of inanimate objects and animals to express human emotions and feelings. There was always melancholy, but in the end the reader emerged spiritually uplifted. 1926's The Appl.... Discover the Margery Williams popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Margery Williams books.

Best Seller Margery Williams Books of 2024

  • Early Christian Writings synopsis, comments

    Early Christian Writings

    Maxwell Staniforth

    The writings in this volume cast a glimmer of light upon the emerging traditions and organization of the infant church, during an otherwise littleknown period of its developmen...

  • The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works synopsis, comments

    The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works

    A. Spearing

    Contains The Cloud of Unknowing, The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, The Book of Privy Counselling, and An Epistle on Prayer. Against a tradition of devotional writings which fo...

  • The Velveteen Rabbit synopsis, comments

    The Velveteen Rabbit

    Margery Williams Bianco

    <B>The Velveteen Rabbit: A Classic Children's Tale of Love and Imagination</B> by <B>Margery Williams Bianco</B>: Enter the enchanting world of "The...

  • The Life of St Teresa of Avila by Herself synopsis, comments

    The Life of St Teresa of Avila by Herself

    Teresa of Ávila & J. Cohen

    Born in the Castilian town of Ávila in 1515, Teresa entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation when she was twentyone. Tormented by illness, doubts and selfrecrimination, she...

  • Father Brown Stories synopsis, comments

    Father Brown Stories

    G. K. Chesterton

    Immortalized in these famous stories, G. K. Chesterton's endearing amateur sleuth has entertained countless generations of readers. For, as his admirers know, Father Brown's cherub...

  • The Desert Fathers synopsis, comments

    The Desert Fathers

    Benedicta Ward

    The Desert Fathers were the first Christian monks, living in solitude in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. In contrast to the formalised and official theology of the "fou...

  • The Velveteen Rabbit illustrated synopsis, comments

    The Velveteen Rabbit illustrated

    Margery Williams Bianco

    The Velveteen Rabbit illustrated Margery Williams Bianco THERE was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should ...

  • Confessions synopsis, comments

    Confessions

    Saint Augustine & R. S. Pine-Coffin

    'Give me chastity and continence, but not yet'The son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Saint Augustine spent his early years torn between conflicting worldviews. The Confe...