Mazo de la Roche
Mazo de la Roche (born on 15. January 1879 in Newmarket , Ontario as Mazo Louise Roche , died on 12. July 1961 in Toronto , Ontario) was a Canadian author. She became famous for the 16-part Jalna novel series.
Private life
Mazo de la Roche was the only child of William Roche and Alberta Roche. The family had English and Irish roots and were closely related to David Willson, the founder of a 19th-century Canadian Quaker sect . Since her father had to move frequently as a businessman, and her mother was also often sick, she grew up a loner and developed her own fictional worlds at an early age. She wrote her first stories at the age of nine. In one of the places she stayed for several years, a rural farm, she was inspired to create the fictional location of Jalna.
Around 1886, her parents adopted their orphaned cousin Caroline Clement, who shared her enthusiasm for her stories and with whom she stayed with her life. In 1931, Clement and de la Roche adopted their friends' two orphaned children.
She studied at the University of Toronto and then lived in Europe for a decade before returning to Canada.
She was buried in Sutton .
plant
De la Roche published her first story in 1902, but it was only after World War I that she began a serious career as a writer. At first she wrote plays. Her first two novels were the two romantic works Possession (1923) and Delight (1926). The third novel was Jalna (1927), for which she won The Atlantic Monthly's award for best novel of the year. In the following years she devoted most of her work to sequels to Jalna and expanded the series to sixteen novels, in which the fate of the Whiteoak family over the course of a century (between 1850 and 1950) are described. Particularly noticeable are details taken from de la Roche's own biography. In the Jalna series, Young Renny (1935) was on the New York Herald Tribune's bestseller list for several months . Plays based on Jalna have also been performed in London, New York and Toronto. In 1972 the CBC produced a Jalna television series. Approximately nine to eleven million copies of the Jalna series of novels have been sold worldwide.
Mazo de la Roche also wrote some novels not linked to Jalna, such as the historical novel Quebec (1944).
Honors
- In 1938 Mazo received the Lorne Pierce Medal
- The Canadian cities of Mississauga and London have streets, parks and schools named after elements of the Jalna series.
- In 1990, a school in her native Newmarket was named after de la Roche.
- She was named a Person of National Historic Significance by the Canadian government in 1976 .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b C. J. Taylor: Mazo de la Roche . In: The Canadian Encyclopedia (engl.)
- ↑ George Hendrick: "Mazo de la Roche: The Hidden Life. In: MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 1991, pp. 264-265.
- ↑ a b c Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 286.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | De la Roche, Mazo |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Roche, Mazo Louise |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Canadian writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 15, 1879 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Newmarket , Ontario |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 12, 1961 |
| Place of death | Toronto , Ontario |