Marguerite de Angeli

She was born Marguerite Lofft in Lapeer, Michigan,[1] one of six children. Her father, George Shadrach Lofft, was a photographer and illustrator; her mother was Ruby Adele Tuttle Lofft. In 1902, her family moved to West Philadelphia, where she spent her most formative years. Marguerite entered high school in 1904, but a year later at age fifteen began to sing professionally as contralto in a Presbyterian choir for $1 a week. She soon withdrew from high school for more musical training.

In 1908, she met John Dailey de Angeli, a violinist, known as Dai. They were married in Toronto on April 12,1910. The first of their six children, John Shadrach de Angeli, was born one year later. After living in many locations in the American and Canadian West, they settled in the Philadelphia suburb of Collingswood, New Jersey.[2] There in 1921 Marguerite started to study drawing under her mentor, Maurice Bower. In 1922, Marguerite began illustrating a Sunday School paper and was soon doing illustrations for magazines such as The Country Gentleman, Ladies' Home Journal, and The American Girl, besides illustrating books for authors including Helen Ferris, Elsie Singmaster, Cornelia Meigs, and Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Her last child, Maurice Bower de Angeli, was born in 1928, seven years before the 1935 publication of her first book, Ted and Nina Go to the Grocery Store. The de Angeli family moved frequently, returning to Pennsylvania and living north of Philadelphia in Jenkintown, west of Philadelphia in the Manoa neighborhood of Havertown, on Carpenter Lane in Germantown, Philadelphia, on Panama Street [3] in Center City, Philadelphia, in an apartment near the Philadelphia Art Museum, and in a cottage in Green Lane, Pennsylvania. They also maintained a summer cabin on Money Island in Toms River, New Jersey.[4] Marguerite's husband died in 1969, eight months before their 60th wedding anniversary.

In 1971, two years after her husband died, she published her autobiography, Butter at the Old Price. Her last work, Friendship and Other Poems, was published in 1981 when she was 92 years old. She died at the age of 98 on June 16, 1987 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was survived by her 3 of her 4 sons: Arthur, Harry and Maurice; daughter, Nina Kuhn; 13 grandchildren, and 16 great-grandchildren.

In her illustrations Marguerite de Angeli employed a number of different media, including charcoal, pen and ink, lithograph (only in earliest work), oils, and watercolors. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is the regional setting of many, but not all, of her books.

Her work explored and depicted the traditions and rich cultural diversity of common people more frequently overlooked – a semi-autobiographical Great Depression family, African American children experiencing the sting of racial prejudice, Polish mine workers aspiring to life beyond the Pennsylvania coal mines, the physically handicapped, colonial Mennonites,the Amish, nineteenth-century Quakers supporting the underground railroad, immigrants, and other traditional or ethnic peoples. De Angeli's books carry an underlying message that we are really all the same, and that all of us deserve tolerance, care, consideration, and respect.

Her 1946 story, Bright April, was the first children's book to address the divisive issue of racial prejudice. She was twice named a Caldecott Honor Book illustrator, first in 1945 for Yonie Wondernose and again in 1955 for Book of Nursery and Mother Goose Rhymes. She received a 1950 Newbery Medal, for The Door in the Wall, which also won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1961, a 1957 Newbery Honor mention for Black Fox of Lorne, a 1961 Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and the 1968 Regina Medal.

Books about Marguerite de Angeli

• Michigan's Marguerite de Angeli: The Story of Lapeer's Native by William Anderson (1987) Available at the Marguerite deAngeli Library in Lapeer, MI or online here.
• Open Doors by Joan Brunette (2002) available at the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in Lansing, MI

• Marguerite de Angeli Archive at the Lapeer District Library's Marguerite deAngeli Library
• Excerpts from her Newbery Award Speech