Life
Cornelia Meigs was born December 6, 1884 to civil engineer Montgomery "Monty" Meigs and Grace Lynde Meigs in Rock Island, Illinois, the fifth of six daughters. When she was one month old, her family moved to Keokuk, Iowa. After graduating from Keokuk High School in 1901 she attended Bryn Mawr College, receiving an A.B. degree in 1907.
Meigs began writing children's books while an English teacher at St. Katherine's School in Davenport, Iowa. Her first book, The Kingdom of the Winding Road was published in 1915. In 1921 she published The Windy Hill, which won the Newbery Honor award. The 1927 book The Trade Wind won the Little, Brown and Co. prize competition. Her next award winner was Clearing Weather, a 1929 Newbery Honor book. Swift Rivers, published in 1932, also received a Newbery Honor.
Meigs is best known for Invincible Louisa, the biography of author Louisa May Alcott, which won a Newbery Medal in 1934. The book traces Alcott's childhood in Pennsylvania and Boston through her writing of the classic, Little Women. In reviewing the book, Kirkus Reviews called Meigs "one of the best-loved authors of fiction for boys and girls."
In 1932, Meigs became a professor of English at Bryn Mawr, where she remained until her retirement in 1950. During World War II she took a year of absence for three years to work for the War Department. After leaving Bryn Mawr Meigs taught writing at the New School of Social Research in New York City. In 1953 she edited and helped author A Critical History of Children's Literature, which has been called "a landmark in the field of children's literature". It was revised and re-issued in 1969. In her lifetime Meigs wrote over 30 fiction books for children, as well as two plays, two biographies, and several books and articles for adults.
Meigs lived at Sion Hill; Havre de Grace, Maryland; and Brandon, Vermont. She died at Havre de Grace, Maryland, on September 10, 1973. Most of her papers are at the Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College, but some may also be found in the libraries of the University of Iowa, and at the de Grummond Library at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.
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