Elizabeth Enright - Life

Life

Elizabeth Enright was born September 17, 1909, in Oak Park, Illinois. Her father, Walter J. Enright, was a political cartoonist. Her mother, Maginel Wright Enright, (the younger sister of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright), was a book and magazine illustrator, a shoe designer for Capezio, and authored the memoir, The Valley of the God-Almighty Joneses. The Enrights divorced when Elizabeth was eleven, and after that she attended boarding school in Connecticut. Her mother remarried, becoming Maginel Wright Barney. Originally Enright intended to be a dancer, and for a time she studied under Martha Graham. Her summers were spent in Nantucket, a location she later used in some of her books.

Preparing for a career as an illustrator, Enright studied at the Art Students League of New York in 1927-28, and at the Parsons School of Design in Paris, France. Enright also reviewed children's literature for The New York Times, taught creative writing at Barnard College, (1960–1962), and led writing seminars at colleges across the US.

Enright married Robert Gillham, an advertising executive with J. Walter Thompson, April 24, 1930. They had three sons: Nicholas, Robert and Oliver. Elizabeth Enright died at her home in Wainscott, Long Island, June 8, 1968. She is buried near her Uncle Frank Lloyd Wright's farm in Spring Green, Wisconsin.