Marguerite de Angeli was an American writer and illustrator of children's books including the 1950 Newbery Award winning book "The Door in the Wall". She wrote and illustrated twenty-eight of her own books, and illustrated more than three dozen books and numerous magazine stories and articles for other authors.
Background
While children's author Marguerite de Angeli spent most of her life in Michigan, her formative years were spent in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, between 1902 and 1916.
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 in Center City, Philadelphia, in an apartment near the Philadelphia Art Museum, and in a cottage in Red Hill, Pennsylvania. They also maintained a summer cabin in Tom's River, New Jersey.
She died at the age of 98 on June 16, 1987 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Education
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.
Career
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.
In 1935 she published her first book, "Ted and Nina Go to the Grocery Store".
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.
