Anne Parrish

Anne Parrish
Born (1888-11-12)November 12, 1888
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Died (1957-09-05)September 5, 1957
Danbury, Connecticut, US
Occupation Writer
Genre Children's literature, novels
Notable works The Dream Coach, Floating Island, The Story of Appleby Capple

Anne Parrish (November 12, 1888 – September 5, 1957) was an American novelist and writer of children's books.[1] She was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal three times from 1925 to 1951.[2]

Early life

Parrish was born November 12, 1888 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Her father was Thomas Clarkson Parrish, who came from a Philadelphia family. Her mother, Anne (née Lodge), had studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, becoming a portrait painter and a friend of Mary Cassatt in Paris. Anne Parrish was the elder sister of the illustrator-writer Dillwyn Parrish and a cousin of the artist Maxfield Parrish, who used them as models in some of his paintings. Thomas Parrish was in the Colorado mining business, dying when he was relatively young. Anne Lodge-Parrish then moved the family back to her hometown of Claymont, Delaware. In 1915, Parrish married industrialist Charles Albert Corliss.

Career

As a young woman, Parrish trained at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and studied under Thomas Eakins. She chose a career in literature, with her first romantic novel Pocketful of Poses appearing in 1923, the same year she had a children's book published, with her brother Dillwyn as illustrator. Their collaboration titled Knee-High to a Grasshopper was followed by another book for children in 1924, Lustres.

In 1925 she was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal for The Dream Coach, the third collaboration with her brother. That same year, her novel The Perennial Bachelor was the eighth best-selling book for the entire year according to the New York Times and won the Harper Prize from her publisher, Harper & Brothers. An author of stories that mostly featured female protagonists, in 1927, she had another novel make it into the top ten list of bestselling novels in the United States. She repeated on the annual bestsellers list again in 1928 with All Kneeling, that was made into the 1950 film Born to Be Bad, starring Joan Fontaine and Robert Ryan.

Monet painting in his garden in Argenteuil, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Parish assembled an art collection that included the 1873 Impressionist painting Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil by Pierre-Auguste Renoir which she bequeathed to the Wadsworth Atheneum museum of art in Hartford, Connecticut.

Later life

Her husband died in 1936. Two years later, she married the poet and novelist Josiah Titzell (aka Frederick Lambeck). They made their home in Redding, Connecticut. After he died in 1943, she continued to live there for the rest of her life.Parrish died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Danbury, Connecticut in 1957. She endowed the "Anne Parrish Titzell Professor of Neurology" chair at Cornell University, originally for research and treatment of mental and emotional disorders.

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ John P. Reid (1992–1999). "Anne Parrish". Collecting Delaware Books. Reprint: J & J Reid (jnjreid.com). Retrieved 2013-02-25.
  2. ↑ "Newbery Medal and Honor Books, 1922–Present". American Library Association; Association for Library Service to Children (ala.org/alsc). Retrieved 2013-02-25.
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