Herminie Templeton Kavanagh
Template:Short description Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox writer
Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (6 May 1861<ref name=Doig/><ref>Births Jun 1861 MCGIBNEY Minnie Allen Farnham 2a 75. FreeBMD. England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index: 1837–1983 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2006.</ref> – 30 October 1933)<ref>Illinois State Archives, Database of Illinois Death Certificates, 1916–1950 Template:Webarchive.</ref> was an Irish writer, most known for her short stories.
Early life and family
Born Minnie Allen McGibney at the British army barracks in Aldershot, England, on 6 May 1861, she was the second of seven children born to Major George McGibney from Templemichael, County Longford, Ireland, and Caroline Allen from Coventry, England.<ref name=Doig/>
The family moved to Quebec, Canada in 1872. By 1880 Minnie lived in Manhattan with her widowed mother and six siblings and worked as a sales clerk.<ref name=Doig>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Her first marriage was to vaudeville performer John Templeton.<ref name=Doig/><ref>U.S. Census, 1 June 1900. State of Illinois, County of Cook, City of Chicago, enumeration district 46, page 8A, family 106.</ref> An article in the Chicago Tribune later stated that she had been abandoned by her first husband in Chicago circa 1893.<ref name=tribune1902/> After their separation, Minnie worked in Chicago as a clerk and stenographer. She adopted the name Herminie some time before 1900, and published her first writing in 1901.<ref name=Doig/>
She became Herminie Templeton Kavanagh after her second marriage, to Marcus Kavanagh (1859–1937), who was born in the United States to Irish immigrants, and who served as a Cook County judge in Chicago from 1898 to 1935.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Accounts differ on how they met, as well as where and when they married, ranging from 1905 to 1908 in Dublin or Iowa.Template:Efn
She and Judge Kavanagh lived together in Chicago and Ocean Grove, New Jersey.Template:Citation needed
Works
Her best known work, Darby O'Gill and the Good People (Template:ISBN), was first published as a series of stories under the name Herminie Templeton in McClure's magazine in 1901–1902, before being published as a book in the United States in 1903. A second edition, published a year before her death, was under the name Herminie T. Kavanagh. The Good People in the title refers to the fairies in Irish mythology; the English translation of aoine maithe is good people.
Her second published book, Ashes of Old Wishes and Other Darby O'Gill Tales (Template:ISBN), was published in 1926. In 1959, Walt Disney released a film based on these two books, called Darby O'Gill and the Little People.
She also wrote two plays, The Color Sergeant (1903), and Swift-Wing of the Cherokee (1903).
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Darby O'Gill and the Good People 1903 illus. by John R. Neill -
The Ashes of Old Wishes 1906 illus. by Edmund J. Sullivan -
Killbohgan and Killboggan 1906 illus. by Edmund J. Sullivan
Death
She died of a heart ailment in Chicago on 30 October 1933, aged 72.<ref name=Doig/> She was buried in New York, her former home.
Notes
References
Further reading
- American Women Playwrights, 1900–1930. A checklist. Compiled by Frances Diodato Bzowski. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1992.
- Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. A checklist, 1700–1974. Volume 1. By R. Reginald. Detroit: Gale Research, 1979.