Phyllis McGinley

Spanning 1897 to 1978, the collection reflects not only the professional career of the American humorist and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet but also the wide scope of her audience.

Writings include, for any given title, any combination of work sheets, manuscripts, production records, and published versions of McGinley's books, essays, interviews, lyrics, poetry, reviews, scripts, speeches and stories.

Memorabilia consists primarily of financial, legal, and printed materials, photographs and scrapbooks.

Marriage and stability were extremely important to McGinley after a childhood of frequent moves and "never having a real home."

Having married happily at 32, considered late at the time, she appeared to love domesticity.

McGinley's life with her husband, Charles Hayden, was, her daughter Patsy Blake stated, "a sanguine, benign, adorable version of 'Mad Men.' " The couple entertained avidly: the regular guest list included Bennett Cerf, the drama critic Walter Kerr and leading advertising executives of the day.

An ardent Roman Catholic, McGinley embraced domesticity in the wake of second-wave feminism, wrote light verse in the wake of the rise of modern avant-garde and confessional poetry, and filled the gap between the housewife and the feminist intellectual who rejected the domestic life.

McGinley would spend most of her professional writing career fending off criticism that tended to diminish her image of a suburban housewife poet—an image that was meant to dismiss any depth in her writing.

McGinley actually labeled herself a "housewife poet," and unlike Anne Sexton, who used the term to be ironic and self-deprecating, McGinley used it as an honorable and purposefully crafted identity.

Phyllis McGinley felt that the capability to foster familial relationships was what gave women their power, and she fought to defend their rights to do so.

She both admired the housewife and her duties and fully recognized the monotony and drudgery that went along with this role.

McGinley felt that, no matter what path a woman chose to follow, the most important thing was for a woman to recognize and acknowledge her unique and honorable place in life, and that a woman who enjoyed herself as a wife and mother should not submit to imposed ambitions or feel constrained to demand change in the institution of the church McGinley cherished.

Phyllis McGinley (March 21, 1905 – February 22, 1978) was an American author of children's books and poetry.

Her poetry was in the style of light verse, specializing in humor, satiric tone and the positive aspects of suburban life.

Phyllis McGinley was born March 21, 1905, in Ontario, Oregon, the daughter of Daniel and Julia Kiesel McGinley.

Her father was a land speculator, and her mother a pianist.

McGinley's family moved to a ranch near Iliff, Colorado, when she was only three months old.

She didn't enjoy her early childhood on the ranch, where she and her brother felt isolated and friendless.

Her father died when she was 12 years old, and the family moved to Utah to live with a widowed aunt.

She studied at the University of Southern California and musical theater at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where she was a Kappa Kappa Gamma, graduating in 1927.

After selling some of her poems, she decided to move to New York in 1929.

McGinley held an assortment of jobs there, including copywriter for an advertising agency, teacher at a junior high school in New Rochelle, and staff writer for Town and Country.

In 1934, she met Charles L. Hayden, who worked for the Bell Telephone Company during the day and played jazz piano in the evening.

They married on June 25, 1937, and moved to Larchmont, New York.

The suburban landscape and culture of her new home was to provide the subject matter of much of McGinley's work.

McGinley had two daughters.

Daughter Julie Hayden was the author of a favorably reviewed collection of short stories entitled The Lists of the Past.

The Plain Princess (1945) by Phyllis McGinley is the coming-of-age story of Esmeralda, who learns to shed her elitist disposition and becomes a humble and caring princess.

A modern take on the conventional fairy tale, it challenges and reverses gender roles, cultural perceptions of suburbia, and fairy tale expectations of beauty.

In 1956, McGinley published a rhymed children's story called "The Year Without a Santa Claus" in Good Housekeeping magazine, and the piece generated enough positive interest to facilitate its being printed in book form the following year.

She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961.

McGinley enjoyed a wide readership in her lifetime, publishing her work in newspapers and women's magazines such as the Ladies Home Journal, as well as in literary periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Saturday Review and The Atlantic.

She also held nearly a dozen honorary degrees – "including one from the stronghold of strictly masculine pride, Dartmouth College" (from the dust jacket of Sixpence in Her Shoe (copy 1964)).

A 1964 newspaper portrayed her version of feminism in contradistinction to Betty Friedan's: "The Betty Friedan philosophy, that "committed" women will not need the regard of any man to feel alive, is rationally and effectively refuted by Miss McGinley."

Time Magazine featured McGinley on its cover on June 18, 1965.

In 1968, actor Boris Karloff recorded a narrated version of the story for a promotional Capitol Records LP which also featured various Christmas songs from the label's catalog on the flip side.

Karloff's reading (warm and similar in feeling to his narration of the How the Grinch Stole Christmas television classic) was also one of his last performances—he died a few months later, in February 1969.

Phyllis McGinley died in New York City in 1978.

The Phyllis McGinley Papers can be found at the Special Collections Research Center of Syracuse University.

The collection comprises personal and business correspondence, writings, and memorabilia.