If you have children, or if you were, yourself, once a child, and if you can read (which, since you’ve made it this far in a much-too-lengthy sentence, we will assume), you’re probably aware that children’s literature that’s also historically accurate is easy to find. That was not always true, and that it now is can be largely attributed to one person: Alice Dalgliesh.
Dalgliesh was born October 7, 1893 in Trinidad in the West Indies. Her family immigrated to England when she was six, and then to the US when she was 12. They settled in New York City, where Dalgliesh attended Columbia University to earn BA and MA degrees in education and English literature. She then became a teacher at the Horace Mann School in New York, where she stayed for 17 years.
But while teaching, Dalgliesh was busy with a couple of other things as well. She wrote for Parent’s Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, the School Library Journal, and The Saturday Review, mostly about children’s books. At the same time she taught classes in children’s literature at Columbia, and worked in the textbook department of the publisher Charles Scribner and Sons. She edited social studies books used in elementary schools.
In 1934 the publisher offered her a full-time job starting a children’s book publishing department. She accepted, and asked the president (which at the time was Charles Scribner himself) for an office. One of the sons, Charles Scribner, Jr, later explained “Scribner’s employed no women except secretaries. When she came to my father and asked him to give her an office, he replied, ‘Oh, do you really need one?’” Apparently he had expected her to begin and run the division out of her home.” Dalgliesh did, however, get her office.
Dalgliesh remained at Charles Scribner and Sons until her retirement in 1960. One odd detail, though, was that while editing books at that publisher, she was writing her own books, which were published by Macmillan instead, a rival publisher. The book publishing industry was, in those days, often described as collegial.
Dalgliesh had begun publishing books in the 1920s, and had her first major success with The Silver Pencil in 1944 (by then she was publishing with Scribner and Sons). The book was autobiographical fiction, a Newbury Honor Book award winner, and described by reviewers as “a treasure to possess and keep.” The Bears on Hemlock Mountain was Dalgliesh’s second Newbury Honor Book, and she followed it up with another in 1954: The Courage of Sarah Noble.
The Courage of Sarah Noble is a true story, fictionalized, and earned a great deal of critical attention for being “…a remarkable book for younger readers — a true pioneer adventure, written for easy reading but without any sacrifice of literary quality or depth of feeling.” The attention also highlighted some of Dalgliesh’s other books of historical fiction written for younger readers. Her books were so successful and won so many awards (over a dozen) that historical fiction became a thriving genre in children’s literature.
Her work as the editor-in-chief of the children’s department of a major publisher also had an impact. She found, mentored, and published any number of writers. In Minders of Make Believe, a book about the world of children’s publishing, Leonard Marcus wrote “her department quietly captured the industry’s respect and more than a few of its accolades.”
In the 1950s, science fiction author Robert Heinlein began writing science fiction for younger readers, and Alice Dalgliesh was his editor. Together they published a whole series of successful books, but had a fairly tempestuous relationship. Heinlein felt some of Dalgliesh’s recommendations were too extensive, and after about a decade switched to a different publisher. Ironically, he made the switch in 1960, the same point at which Dalgliesh retired, so they wouldn’t have worked together again anyway.
Dalgliesh’s archive of writings and correspondence are available in three academic libraries, at the University of Minnesota, Vassar College, and Princeton University.
