Marriage, Children and The Influence of Walter De La Mare's Writings
While visiting her publisher, Margery Williams met Francisco Bianco, an Italian living in London, who was employed as the manager of one of the book departments. They were married in 1904 and became the parents of a son, Cecco and a daughter, Pamela, who twenty years later would be illustrating some of her mother's books. Margery considered motherhood a full-time job, requiring suspension of her writing activities.
In 1907 the family left England, traveling through Europe for the next three years, eventually settling in Turin, Italy. In August 1914 Italy, along with the rest of Europe, was plunged into World War I and Francisco Bianco found himself in an Italian Army uniform fighting for his country along with millions of other soldiers from many nations. While remaining on the homefront with the children, Margery Bianco gained hope and inspiration from the works of the poet she called her "spiritual mentor", Walter de la Mare, who she felt truly understood the mindset of children.
In 1914, Williams wrote a horror novel, The Thing in the Woods, about a werewolf in the Pennsylvania region. The Thing in the Woods was later republished in the US under the pseudonym "Harper Williams". The Thing in the Woods was known to H.P. Lovecraft, and some commentators think it may have influenced Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror".
Read more about this topic: Margery Williams
Famous quotes containing the words children, influence, walter, mare and/or writings:
“The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hath cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618)
“‘What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I,
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky;”
—Walter De La Mare (1873–1956)
“An able reader often discovers in other people’s writings perfections beyond those that the author put in or perceived, and lends them richer meanings and aspects.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)