Evangeline Walton

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Evangeline Walton

Evangeline Walton (actually Evangeline Walton Ensley ; born November 14, 1907 in Indianapolis , Indiana ; died March 11, 1996 in Tucson , Arizona ) was an American writer. Her best-known work is the Fantasy - tetralogy The Four Branches of the Mabinogi , a reinterpretation of the Celtic Mabinogion .

Life

Walton came from a educated Quaker family and was the daughter of Marion Edmund Ensley and Wilna Eunice, nee Coyner. Evangeline Walton suffered from numerous diseases as a child, most notably chronic respiratory diseases. Treating her bronchitis and sinusitis with silver nitrate tincture caused her skin to turn gray and darker in later years. Because of her health, she was unable to attend normal school operations and received private lessons. She wrote her first short stories at the age of six and read Lord Dunsany , L. Frank Baum , James Stephens , Algernon Blackwood and Henry Rider Haggard . She was particularly impressed by Welsh legends, especially the Celtic myth of the Mabinogion. In 1924 their parents divorced and grew up with their mother and grandmother along with their large family. Growing up in a female environment and her parents' divorce story had a formative influence on her narratives, in which women play a central role. One saw a "feminist writing" here long before modern feminism . Concepts of a feminist-mythologically motivated ecology are also depicted in Walton's books, in which the earth is female and mother earth is sullied and damaged by the industry run by men. She wrote:

"But when we were superstitious enough to hold the earth sacred and worship her, we did nothing to endanger our future upon her, as we do now."

"But when we were superstitious enough to keep the earth holy and worship it, we did nothing to jeopardize our future for it, as we do now."

- Evangeline Walton : Afterword to Prince of Annwn (1974)

Her reading of the Mabinogion made her speculate as to how the admired James Stephens would have treated the material. This led to the fact that she wrote a Mabinogion novel herself, always trying to only supplement and interpret, without contradicting the sources. The novel was published in 1936 under the somewhat unfortunate title The Virgin and the Swine . Despite an appreciative review by John Cowper Powys , with whom Walton had a long-standing friendship, the novel went largely unnoticed until Lin Carter discovered it for the Adult Fantasy Series and brought it out again in 1970 under the new title The Island of the Mighty . On that occasion, when it came to light that there was another novel that had not found a publisher, The Children of Llyr followed in 1971 . The author completed the cycle with The Song of Rhiannon (1972) and Prince of Anwnn (1974). Each book corresponds to one of the four so-called "branches" of the Mabinogion.

After the first Mabinogion volume in 1936, Evangeline Walton published Witch House (1945, German as Der Hexenkreis ), a witch story set in Massachusetts, The Cross and the Sword (1956), a historical novel set in the Viking Age, and The Sword Is Forged (1983, German as The Last Amazone ), an adaptation of the Theseus legend and part of a trilogy with two other previously unpublished novels. A collection of her stories was published in 2012 as Above Ker-Is and Other Stories , of the 10 stories contained, 7 had not previously been published. In 2013 the novel She Walks in Darkness was published .

After World War II, she moved to Tucson, Arizona with her mother. In 1991 she had to undergo surgery for a brain tumor that turned out to be benign. Her health continued to deteriorate over the following years, however, and Walton died in 1996 at the age of 88 after undergoing surgery for lung cancer. Her estate is in the University of Arizona Library at Tucson.

Awards

bibliography

Four branches of the Mabinogion / The four branches of the Mabinogi (romantic tetralogy)
  • 1 Prince of Annwn (1974)
  • 2 The Children of Llyr (1971)
  • 3 The Song of Rhiannon (1972)
  • 4 The Virgin and the Swine (1936, also called The Island of the Mighty , 1970)
  • The Mabinogion (1977, collection of 1-4)
    • English: The four branches of the Mabinogi. Translated by Jürgen Schweier. 2 volumes in slipcase. Klett-Cotta ( Hobbit Press ), 1979, ISBN 3-12-908540-8 .
  • The Mabinogion Tetralogy (2002, collection of 1–4)
Novels
  • Witch House (1945)
  • The Cross and the Sword (1956, also called Son of Darkness , 1957)
  • The Sword Is Forged (1983)
    • German: The last Amazon. Translated by Hans J. Schütz. Klett-Cotta (Hobbit Press), 1985, ISBN 3-608-95283-7 .
  • She Walks in Darkness (2013)
collection
  • Above Ker-Is and Other Stories (2012)
Short stories
  • At the End of the Corridor (1950)
  • Above Ker-Is (1978)
  • The Mistress of Kaer-Mor (1980, also as Evangeline Walton Ensley)
  • The Chinese Woman (1981)
  • The Judgment of St. Yves (1981)
  • The Ship from Away (1982)
  • The Forest That Would Not Be Cut Down (1985)
  • Cannibal Sorcerer (1993, with Bruce D. Arthurs)
  • They That Have Wings (2011)
  • Lus-Mor (2012)
  • The Other One (2012)
  • The Tree of Perkunas (2012)
  • Werewolf (2012)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Cosette Kies: Walton, Evangeline. In: David Pringle : St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers. St. James Press, New York 1996, ISBN 1-55862-205-5 , p. 586.
  2. ↑ Reviews of the collection , accessed on October 27, 2018.
  3. ↑ Papers of Evangeline Walton , University of Arizona, Tucson, accessed October 27, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Walton, Evangeline
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ensley, Evangeline Walton (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Indianapolis
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1996
Place of death Tucson , Arizona