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Stuff We Like #60: Elizabeth Coatsworth

2/4/2016

6 Comments

 
I am horrendously late with this - I can only say that time got away from me today, and say a prayer to the squirrel gods to forgive me. --Scott
Picture
I have long wanted to be a published author. My family has a few of us - my brother Whit Honea has written a successful parenting book, and my grandmother Joyce Peterson was a prolific playwright, writing for the children at her church that she loved. But there are no other Coatsworth authors that I know of.

But there once was. There are not many Coatsworths in the world, truth be told. It's a fairly rare name, one that passed down to me from origins in Danish royalty in the 1400s and then the English countryside in the 1600s. I've only recently learned more about its storied history.

My branch of the family ended up in South Dakota. Another branch, closely related to my own, ended up in Ontario, and a few months ago, I met a woman from that branch who happens to live just two blocks from me, and is my first cousin, six times removed.

Along one of the other branches was an author named Elizabeth Coatsworth. Her line ended up in New England--she was born in New York in 1893. She was a fiercely intelligent woman, graduating from Vassar College and later from Columbia, and a world traveler, visiting what was then called the Orient, riding horseback through the Philippines, exploring Indonesia and China, and sleeping in a Buddhist monastery.

She started out writing poetry for adults, but then moved into children's literature on the advice of a friend and publisher. She won the Newbury Medal for "The Cat Who Went to Heaven" in 1930.

The year I was born, in 1968, she was a runner-up for the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award for children's writers. And in 1986, the year I graduated from high school, intent on pursuing my writing career, she passed away at her home in Maine.

Our paths never crossed. But I knew about her.

I have recently taken more of an interest in her as my own writing career has started to take off. I discovered that she wrote or participated in at least 42 books. One of her last books, originally issued as "Pure Magic" in 1975, was later reissued as a Scholastic Book Services title as "The Werefox." It caught my eye because of the title - fascinating to me, because  I now run a site that includes authors of many "were" stories. I ordered a copy of it through Amazon - $15 for what was originally probably a $2 book - and it was worth every penny.

I find her writing style to be magical, lyrical, enchanting:

"Johnny Dunlap woke and lay on his back in his narrow bed listening. There it was, the faint shrill sweet bark which had awakened him. Even in the deepest sleep, that sound could rouse him and call him back out of his dreams to the living world--if it was the living world to which he returned. Sometimes it seemed stranger than any of his dreams--one morning he had found a wild yellow violet in his hand, still fresh as if it had just been picked along a woods path."

I close my eyes and try to picture her at home, sitting in a fireplace-warmed room in Maine, looking out the window at the fresh fallen snow. Her mind is racing with the possibilities of the story, even at the respectable age of 82, still churning as the mind of a writer is wont to.

And I feel a connection with her. As if, in that moment, with that story, she was casting a line into the future. A line to me.

A few of her books are still in print, but most are scattered to the shelves of used bookstores and the dustbins of history. But perhaps her love of writing lives on a little, in me.

So I grab hold of the line she has thrown me, and write with all my heart..

And I imagine her sitting back in her chair with a smile.
6 Comments
Cindy Coatsworth Lewis
2/6/2016 03:17:44 pm

I love your prose. As a child it was always FUN to find one of her books (with MY last name) in the school library.

Reply
J. Scott Coatsworth
2/6/2016 05:29:54 pm

I want to find out more about her. :)

Reply
Phil Young
2/7/2016 12:49:59 am

Scott -
I have been collecting Coatsworth genealogy information over a 20 yr span. This is what I have on Elizabeth Coatsworth. I hope it helps.
Elizabeth Coatsworth, who writes "about things which touch my imagination," has won the Newberry Award and a revered place in children's literature with over 50 books in the past years.
Miss Coatsworth was only 5 when her parents took her on her first trip through Europe and Egypt. Years later, after receiving an A.B. from Vassar and a M.A. from Columbia, she and her sister spent a year filled with adventure in the Orient, riding horseback through the Philippine headhunting country, exploring little known temples in Java and sleeping in Buddhist monasteries in the Korean Diamond Mountains, where sometimes they were the first Caucasian women the people had seen.
After many other journeys "in body", Miss Coatsworth now does her traveling "in mind" to Africa, the island of Tristan da Cunha, Greenland and Corinth - the settings of some of her books.
The majority of her books, however, both for adults and children, have a New England background, where Miss Coatsworth and her husband, Henry Beston, lived for many years on Boston's south shore. They now spend most of their time on a farm in Maine, in close touch with their 2 daughters and 8 grandchildren.
Miss Coatsworth's education is as follows:
Buffalo Seminary graduate 1911
Vassar College B.A. 1915
Columbia University M.A. 1916
also studied at Radcliffe College

Home : Chimney Farm, Nobleboro, ME 04555

A GENERAL CHRONOLOGY FOR ELIZABETH COATSWORTH

1893 - Born at Buffalo, NY
1898-99 - Abroad 8 months in England, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Italy and Egypt
1906-09 - First 2 years of high school in Pasadena, CA
1908 - Christmas & New Year's vacation in Mexico and January 1909 in Oaxaca
1909-11 - At the Buffalo Seminary
1912 - Father died, family gave up home in Buffalo
1911-15 - At Vassar College
1914 - During a summer's walking trip in England, E.C. "began to write poetry with with real zest"
1915 - B.A. at Vassar with Junior Phi Beta Kappa
1916 - Lived in New York. M.A. at Columbia University
1916-18 - 13 months in the Far East: Japan, China, the Philippines, Java, Siam (to PEking to the edge of the Gobi Desert), houseboat to West Lake. In Korea to Diamond Mts. with 24 coolies. Japan and the final month in Hawaii. Before and after Orient, lived with relatives in California.
1919 - Sister, Margaret, married Morton Smith and came East to live in Hingham, MA. E.C. and her mother lived in Cambridge, MA where E.C. studied at Radcliffe.
1920-28 - "Years of work and travel hard to untangle" : with her mother and sister traveled in Normandy, Brittany, England and Scotland; later with her mother and friends around the Mediterranean, returning to Egypt and on to the Holy Land. Journeys alternated between Europe and California. In 1921 or 22 her mother bought the house in Hingham, MA called "Shipcote" which became their base until E.C.'s marriage.
1929 - In January, E.C. became engaged to Henry Beston, author and naturalist. Spring in California, when she wrote the Newbery Medal-winning "The Cat Who Went To Heaven" ; rode on mule back with Margaret into the mountains of Guatemala. In June married Henry Beston, honeymoon at "The Fo'castle", celebrated in his classic The Outermost House.
1930 - Daughter Margaret (Meg) born in June.
1931 - Bought "Chimney Farm" at Nobleboro, ME; thereafter, moved to Maine.
1932 - Daughter Catherine (Kate) born in April.
1933-54 - Many trips with H.B. : to the Gaspe', Canada in 1933, to Yucatan and Mexico, Arizona, California in 1936-38, many trips to Canada for H.B.'s book, The St. Lawrence (published 1942) . With Meg & Kate to Denmark, Sweden, Norway, in 1953. with Meg to Paris, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland in 1954.
1953 - Kate married Richard Barnes
1956 - Meg married Dorik Mechau
1957-67 - Spent winters mostly in Claremont, CA : to Mexico in 1960. H.B. very ill in winter of 1960-61. By 1963, each daughter had 4 children.
1968 - H.B. died on April 15th and was buried in the farm burying ground.
1968 - E.C. lives at Chimney Farm with her housekeeper and black standard poodle, Tamar.

Phil Young
2/7/2016 12:51:24 am

PS Didn't your grandfather, John Coatsworth, write a book about his life. Another Coatsworth author ?

Reply
AntheaMary Doe
6/27/2019 01:41:24 am

Hullo there - I have a mystery you may be able to help me solve. As a child I loved the Cat Who Went to Heaven and I still own an original edition. The mystery: my edition sets the story in old China with exquisite illustrations by Joan Kiddell-Monroe - published by J M Dent & Sons Ltd, London UK. Later editions I have seen set the story in Japan. I would love to know why the story was changed to Japan. It is a real mystery and so far, no-one has been able to tell me why.
Maybe you can - I would dearly LOVE to knowl

Reply
CAROLYN M NOMURA
8/10/2023 03:21:26 am

Fascinating to learn about the original setting of The cat Who Went to Heaven in old China. I am of Japanese descent, American, but lived in Japan for two years after college graduation and have studied the Japanese from an anthropological perspective. I am astonished that a European American wrote a book that is so true to the culture of bygone Japan. (I only wish that the awkward adjective "serviceableness" had not been penned to describe a generic dog.) The edition the questioner possessed is rare, indeed. One thought I have is that the U.K. publisher believed old China would be of greater interest to the British reader than old Japan.

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    • Evelyn Benvie
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