Marjorie Whitaker

Marjorie Olive Whitaker, née Taylor (23 September 1895, Bradford – 7 January 1976, Skipton), better known under her pseudonym Malachi Whitaker, was an English writer, noted for her short stories and an autobiography. She wrote nearly 100 stories published in four collections by Jonathan Cape in the 1920s and 1930s. Her talent was recognized by contemporaries: Vita Sackville-West compared her to Katherine Mansfield, and she was known as the 'Bradford Chekhov'. Following the publication of her memoir And so did I in 1939, she announced her retirement from writing.[1]

Biography

Whitaker was born in 1895 in Bradford, the eighth of eleven children. She left school when she was 13, and worked for her father writing greeting cards for his bookbinding works. She married Leonard Whitaker in 1917, and the couple adopted two children.

Works
Short Stories
  • Frost in April (1929)
  • No Luggage? (1930)
  • Five for Silver (1932)
  • Honeymoon and Other Stories (1934)
  • Selected Stories (1946)
  • The Crystal Fountain and Other Stories (1984)
  • The Journey Home and Other Stories (2017)
Memoirs
  • And so did I (1939)
Humor
  • The Autobiography of Ethel Firebrace (1937) (written pseudonymously with Gay Taylor)

References
  1. Clare L. Taylor, ‘Whitaker , Marjorie Olive (1895–1976)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 25 June 2009
  • 'Malachi Whitaker: Writer of short stories', The Times, 27 January 1976
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