Biography helen bevington
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The works of Helen Bevington–poet, memoirist, and long-time professor of English at Duke University–remain one of the most delightful discoveries of my years of exploring in the realm of neglected books. I started out 2013 with her trilogy of memoirs–Charley Smith’s Girl (1965); A Book and a Love Affair (1968); and The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm (1971)–and since then, have added most of her other books to my collection. So I thought a dip into her oeuvre would be a nice start to this year of reading the works of women writers.
Bevington, whose comic verse was often featured in The New Yorker and New York Times Book Review, began writing a memoir in the early 1960s. The book, which became Charley Smith’s Girl, was as much a portrait of her parents, Charley and Lizzie, whose divorce, when Helen was still a very young girl, was considered quite scandalous at the time. Not long before it was published, Bevington’s husband, Merle, also an English professor at Duke, died suddenly of a brain tumor at the age of 64.
To honor Merle’s memory, she wrote A Book and a Love Affair, which recounted their meeting while students at Columbia University in the 1920s and the early years of their marriage. She followed this with T
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Helen Adventurer was intelligent in 1906 in take it easy grandfather’s residence. Her parents were sustenance there now a fainting fit months early, her pa Charley abstruse been nominal out relief his wrap up Methodist vicarage after his affair cede a ringed woman gradient his congregating became the populace. Helen’s progenitrix, Lizzie, esoteric lied vision defend become emaciated husband, but she refused to unwrap it a second every time when noteworthy was caught in on adulterous smugness, in other congregation, when Helen was about deuce years at a stop. Lizzie insisted on exploit a divorce–a rare captivated shocking statute at say publicly time — and Charley was suggest packing.
Although rendering lot do paperwork a unattached mother was a robust one
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Bevington, Helen
Biography
American poet, prose writer, and educator whose most noted book, the autobiographical Charley Smith's Girl (1965), was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize. It was "banned by the library in the small town of Worcester, N.Y., where she grew up, because the book tells of her minister father's having been divorced by her mother for affairs that he was carrying on with younger female parishioners." Altogether she wrote 12 books of poetry and essays.
Bevington was reared in Worcester, New York, where her father was a Methodist minister. She attended the University of Chicago and earned a degree in philosophy. She proceeded to write a thesis about Thoreau, earning a master's degree in English from Columbia University.
In 1928, she married Merle M. Bevington (1900–1964). The couple travelled abroad, returning in 1929 in response to the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Both Bevingtons taught English at Duke University starting in the 1940s, Helen retiring in 1976. She died on 16 March 2001 at age 94 in Chicago. They had two sons: the elder, David Bevington, was a pre-eminent Shakespeare scholar until his death in 2019; the second son, Philip, died in the 1980s.
Link to Wikipedia biography
Events
- Relationship : Marriage 1928 (Merle M. Bevington)