(I figured some people here would want to know.)
She lived in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
(Lincoln is sometimes described as a "suburb of Boston." Not quite accurate, IMO. After all, when you think of suburbia, chances are you don't think of lush
meadows, woods, ponds, big lovely houses that are two centuries old and older, farms, horses, and
sheep.)
She would have turned 96 on Dec. 30th.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/obituaries/jane-langton-dead.html
By Katharine Q. Seelye Dec. 26, 2018
First half:
Jane Langton, a prolific New England author who evoked a palpable sense of place in her mysteries and children’s books, and who illustrated many of her works herself, died on Saturday in hospice care near her home in Lincoln, Mass.
She was 95.
Her son David Langton said the cause was complications of a respiratory condition.
Ms. Langton’s home, about half an hour’s drive northwest of Boston, was adjacent to the historic town of Concord and a stone’s throw from Walden Pond, places she considered hallowed ground. In her more than 30 books, most of
them mysteries and
children’s books, she frequently summoned the revolutionary past and the transcendental spirit of Emerson and Thoreau in Concord, a picture-postcard monument to Americana that Boston magazine has called “the world’s quaintest town.”
The titles of Ms. Langton’s books reflect her devotion to the region: “The Transcendental Murder” (1964), “Dark Nantucket Noon” (1975), “Emily Dickinson Is Dead” (1984), “God in Concord” (1992).
“A novel grows out of a sense of place,” Ms. Langton told The Boston Globe in 1995. “A story might have some pompous theme but, really, its meaning must
come from an organic relationship with its setting.”
In “The Transcendental Murder,” she wrote that in Concord’s “simple houses noble as Doric temples there had flamed up a kind of rural American Athens.”
In “The Dante Game,” a character contemplating the miracle of the famed Duomo in Florence, Italy, notes, “Nothing in Concord’s rural landscape was miraculous except in the profoundest natural way, in the sense that miracles abound in the
unsullied sky, in the purling of water over rocks.”
Like the Transcendentalists, Ms. Langton had a deep appreciation of nature. And
like them, her son Christopher said in a telephone interview, “she believed there was a fundamental goodness out there that would prevail and you could find it in anybody
if you dug deep enough.”
Ms. Langton received the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award last
year for a series of 18 books, published between 1964 and 2005, whose central character, Homer Kelly, is a tweedy Harvard professor and erstwhile police lieutenant. The fifth
in the series, “Emily Dickinson Is Dead,” received an award from the Nero Wolfe Society...
(snip)
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=--gwXLvBG-OFggfIha-wCA&q=jane+langton+95&btnK=Google+Search&oq=jane+langton+95&gs_l=psy-ab.3...684.3100..3222...0.0..0.81.1042.16....2..0....1..gws-wiz.....0..0j0i131j0i3.Cp7Lz5H0KNE
(multiple obituaries)
She won a 1980 Newbery Honor for "The Fledgling."
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/l/jane-langton/
(book covers)
http://web.archive.org/web/20080207001259/http://www.janelangton.com/
(webpage from 2008?)
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/author/jane-langton/
(Kirkus reviews - a lot)
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/83378.Jane_Langton
(reader reviews - according to this, "The Fledgling" is better known than "The
Diamond in the Window")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Langton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo0SkDJ1F0M&t=1s
(short, amusing video filmed in Lincoln - I know two of the buildings very well, though not hers!)
From "Contemporary Authors":
Reading to her sons, Christopher and David, led Langton to think about writing children's books. Early in her career as an author, she wrote stories similar to those of Ransome and Nesbit. Langton remarked about her first attempts at writing books, "I
began under the spell of those remembered English stories of gardens and kings and castles. Slowly over a period of several years I wrote three books. They all failed. But I'm glad I wrote them. Flops they were, but I was on the right path. Even as
failures they were indispensable." Later, she said, the children's stories of Eleanor Estes showed her that "children's books didn't have to be about princesses in imaginary countries. They could be about ordinary people here and
now."
WRITINGS:
FOR CHILDREN
(And illustrator) The Majesty of Grace, Harper (New York, NY), 1961, published as Her Majesty, Grace Jones, illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully, 1972.
The Boyhood of Grace Jones, illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully, Harper (New York, NY), 1972.
Paper Chains, Harper (New York, NY), 1977.
The Hedgehog Boy: A Latvian Folktale, illustrated by Ilse Plume, Harper (New York, NY), 1985.
Salt: From a Russian Folktale, illustrated by Ilse Plume, Hyperion Press (New York, NY), 1992.
The Queen's Necklace: A Swedish Folktale, illustrated by Ilse Plume, Hyperion Press (New York, NY), 1994.
Saint Francis and the Wolf, illustrated by Ilse Plume, David R. Godine (Boston, MA), 2007.
FOR CHILDREN; "HALL FAMILY CHRONICLES" SERIES
The Diamond in the Window, illustrated by Erik Blegvad, Harper (New York, NY), 1962.
The Swing in the Summerhouse, illustrated by Erik Blegvad, Harper (New York, NY), 1967.
The Astonishing Stereoscope, illustrated by Erik Blegvad, Harper (New York,
NY), 1971.
The Fledgling, illustrated by Erik Blegvad, Harper (New York, NY), 1980, reprinted, 2002.
The Fragile Flag, illustrated by Erik Blegvad, Harper (New York, NY), 1984.
The Time Bike, illustrated by Erik Blegvad, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.
The Mysterious Circus, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.
The Dragon Tree, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2008.
"HOMER KELLY" MYSTERY NOVELS
The Transcendental Murder, Harper (New York, NY), 1964, published as The Minuteman Murder, Dell (New York, NY), 1976.
(And illustrator) Dark Nantucket Noon, Harper (New York, NY), 1975.
(And illustrator) The Memorial Hall Murder, Harper (New York, NY), 1978.
(And illustrator) Natural Enemy, Ticknor & Fields (New York, NY), 1982.
(And illustrator) Emily Dickinson Is Dead, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1984.
(And illustrator) Good and Dead, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1986.
(And illustrator) Murder at the Gardner, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1988.
(And illustrator) The Dante Game, Viking (New York, NY), 1991.
(And illustrator) God in Concord, Viking (New York, NY), 1992.
(And illustrator) Divine Inspiration, Viking (New York, NY), 1993.
The Shortest Day: Murder at the Revels, Viking (New York, NY), 1995.
(And illustrator) Dead as a Dodo, Viking (New York, NY), 1996.
(And illustrator) The Face on the Wall, Viking (New York, NY), 1998.
(And illustrator) The Thief of Venice, Viking (New York, NY), 1999.
(And illustrator) Murder at Monticello, Viking (New York, NY), 2001.
The Escher Twist, illustrated with prints by M.C. Escher, Viking (New York,
NY), 2002.
The Deserter: Murder at Gettysburg, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2003.
Steeplechase, St. Martin's Minotaur (New York, NY), 2005.
OTHER
"Contributor of prose text to Acts of Light (includes poems by Emily Dickinson and paintings and drawings by Nancy Ekholm Burkert), New York Graphic
Society, 1980. Contributor to New York Times Book Review."
Lenona.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)