Marguerite Vivian Young

Marguerite Vivian Young (August 26, 1908 – November 17, 1995) was an American novelist and academic. She is best known for her novel Miss MacIntosh, My Darling. In her later years, she was known for teaching creative writing and as a mentor to young authors. "She was a respected literary figure as well as a cherished Greenwich Village eccentric." During her lifetime, Young wrote two books of poetry, two historical studies, one collection of short stories, one novel, and one collection of essays.

Background Young was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. and by her mother, Fay Herron Knight, she was a direct descendant of John Knox. Her grandmother nurtured Young's love of literature.

Career

Education

Young studied at Butler University in Indianapolis, receiving a BA in French and English. She then attended the University of Chicago, auditing Thornton Wilder's writing class at his invitation.

While attending the University of Chicago, Young had a part-time position reading Shakespeare to Minna K. Weissenbach. A patron of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Weissenbach was sometimes known as "the opium lady of Hyde Park" and she became the inspiration for the Opium Lady in Young's Miss MacIntosh, My Darling. Drug-based flights of fantasy were to make their way into the novel. and wrote papers for the philosophy department, but never finalized the degree. She did hold a Master of Arts degree (1936) from the university. She taught at the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Teaching

She briefly taught at Shortridge High School before embarking on a distinguished literary career. In New York she held a contract lectureship in English literature during the 1960s at Fordham University.

Works

Young's first book of poetry, Prismatic Ground, was published in 1937, She wrote articles, poetry, and book reviews while also teaching creative writing at various venues, including the New School for Social Research, Fordham University, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.alt=Marguerite Young, 1964. Photographed by Vytas Valaitis for the back jacket of "Miss MacIntosh, My Darling," Scribner's Sons, 1965. Marguerite Young with the manuscript of Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, Scribner's Sons, published in 1965. Photographed by Vytas Valaitis, 1964. In 1944, Scribners commissioned her to write a new work, ultimately published as the epic novel Miss MacIntosh, My Darling (1965).

Young's next project was to be a biography of Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley, the creator of Little Orphant Annie. Her experiences in joining the protests against the Vietnam War made her turn her focus to Riley's friendship with Eugene V. Debs.

During Marguerite Young's final illness, she was nursed by Marilyn Hamilton and Suzanne Oboler. Together, during this time, they compiled her unfinished manuscript and submitted it to her publisher. After her death, the manuscript was edited by Charles Ruas to include Young's survey of utopian communities as well as her portraits of major historical figures encountered by Debs in his struggles as a labor organizer: the portraits of Mary Todd Lincoln, James Whitcomb Riley, Joe Hill, Sojourner Truth, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith and Susan B. Anthony. This edited version of Harp Song for a Radical was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1999. Also in her last illness, Marguerite Young returned to writing poetry.

Inviting the Muses, a collection of her stories, essays, and reviews, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1994. Her Collected Poems was published in 2022 by Chatwin Books/Sublunary Editions. Young's papers are at the Beinecke Library, Yale University.

Personal life and death

When Marguerite Young became fully incapacitated, her niece, Daphne Nowling, came to New York from Indiana and took both Young and the contents of her Bleecker Street floor-through apartment—library, doll collection and all—to her own home in Indianapolis. There she recreated Young's apartment, where she nursed her until the end. Young died on November 17, 1995, in Indianapolis, Indiana. The readings were by Young's contemporaries in the literary, theatre, and journalistic worlds, such as Leo Lerman, Wyatt Cooper, Osceola Archer, Marian Seldes, Ruth Ford, James Coco, Peggy Cass, and Earle Hyman. The artist Rob Wynne scored each program with concrete sound effects and atonal and harmonic music, as well as opera. The programs were distributed nationally through the Pacifica Radio Network. In 2014, David Weinstein, Director of the Clocktower Gallery, and Tennae Maki, restored the series and digitized it, making it available through Art International Radio's Internet station "Art on Air." Those recordings are now available on the Who Is Marguerite Young? website.

Radio readings from Miss Macintosh, My Darling (1976–1977) Marguerite Young Interview Anaïs Nin and Marguerite Young (c. 1975)