Martha Ostenso

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Martha Ostenso (born September 17, 1900 in Haukeland , Bergen , Norway , † November 24, 1963 in Seattle , Washington ) was a Norwegian- American writer .

Life

Martha Ostenso was the daughter of Olina Tungeland and Sigurd Ostenso. The family immigrated to the United States in 1902 and Ostenso grew up in South Dakota , Minnesota and Manitoba , Canada . She graduated from the University of Manitoba without a degree . During this time she met the playwright and English professor Douglas Durkin. He left his wife and children and moved to New York City , where he took a position at Columbia Universityassumed. Ostenso followed him, began studying literature at Columbia and from then on lived with him. After Durkin's wife died, she married him in 1944. The marriage lasted until her death in 1963 and had no children. During her college years she worked as a social worker in Brooklyn and then moved with Durkin to Minnesota, where she taught and wrote in her spare time.

After the poetry book A Far Land , she made her debut as a writer in 1925 with the novel Wild Geese . The book became her greatest success and she won several literary prizes which brought in total prize money of $ 13,500. A year later it was published in German by Rikola Verlag in Vienna under the title Der Ruf der Wildgänse . It was first filmed in 1927. Later there were two other adaptations with the Austrian film Ruf der Wildgänse from 1961 and the US television film After the Harvest . The couple took up a second residence in Hollywood .

Ostenso wrote 15 more novels until her death, often set on a farm in Minnesota or Manitoba and containing melodramatic elements of love. Through Durkin's success, the two managed to make $ 30,000 to $ 40,000 annually together. However, the quality of her novels deteriorated over time, according to critics, which many attributed to her dissolute lifestyle.

In 1963, the couple moved to Seattle to live closer to Durkin's children. In the same year Ostenso died of cirrhosis of the liver .

Works

  • A Far Land (1924)
  • Wild Geese (1925)
  • The Dark Dawn (1926)
  • The Mad Carews (1927)
  • The Young May Moon (1929)
  • The Waters Under the Earth (1930)
  • Prologue to Love (1931)
  • There's Always Another Year (1933)
  • The White Reef (1934)
  • The Stone Field (1937)
  • The Mandrake Root (1938)
  • Love Passed This Way (1942)
  • And They Shall Walk (1943)
  • O River, Remember! (1943)
  • Milk Route (1948)
  • The Sunset Tree (1949)
  • A Man Had Tall Sons (1958)

literature

  • Reingard M. Nischik , Konrad Groß, Wolfgang Klooss Eds .: Canadian literary history. JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2005; from unchang. 8th edition and as an ebook: Springer Nature , pp. 134 - 135 (depiction of Wild geese ; photo)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ostenso, Martha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Norwegian-American writer
DATE OF BIRTH 17th September 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Haukeland , Bergen , Norway
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1963
Place of death Seattle , Washington