Elizabeth Enright (1907–1968)

Elizabeth Enright's mother, Maginel Wright Enright, was a popular magazine and children's book illustrator, and her father, Walter J. Enright, was a political cartoonist. The couple divorced when Elizabeth was 11 years old, and she was sent to a boarding school in Connecticut. She spent summers on Nantucket and on her uncle Frank Lloyd Wright's farm in Wisconsin, locations she later used in some of her works. She studied dancing for time under Martha Graham, and attended the Art Students League of New York, Parsons School of Design, and studied art in Paris. In 1930, she married Robert Gillham, an advertising executive, with whom she had three sons. She created her first book, Kintu: A Congo Adventure, in 1935. Among her beloved children's books are those featuring the Melendy family, including The Saturdays (1941). Elizabeth Enright also wrote short stories for adults, and her work was published in national publications such as The New Yorker, Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s, and The Saturday Evening Post. She also taught creative writing at Barnard College and reviewed children's literature for The New York Times. writing. She won many awards in her career, including the 1939 Newbery Medal for Thimble Summer and a 1958 Newbery Honor for Gone-Away Lake.