Margaret Wilhelmina

Margaret Wilson - The Able McLaughlins Margaret Wilhelmina

Margaret Wilhelmina Wilson was born on the 16th January 1882 in Traer, Iowa.

Her early years were spent on the family farm before she enrolled at the University of Chicago and obtained degrees in 1903 & 1904.

On graduating she became a missionary for the United Presbyterian Church of North America and was sent to the Punjab in India to work at a girl's school and then a hospital.

Illness meant a return home in 1910. She would spend the next few years at the divinity school of The University of Chicago and to teach at West Pullman High School. She also took care of her invalided father and wrote a number of short stories which were published in various magazines including the Atlantic Monthly. Many of these explored the role of religion and the secondary status of women in society.

In 1923 she won a $2000 writing prize offered by Harper & Brothers. That same year she married George Douglas Turner, who she had met in India 19 years before.

Turner was a tutor at Brasenose College, Oxford and later the warden of Dartmoor Prison. She was now to live in England.

In 1924 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel 'The Able McLaughlins'

She continued to write, using in various novels, her experiences of all those years before in India and to continue to explore women's role in society although, at times, her critics were apt to label her work as melodramatic.

Her interest in penal reform provoked a non-fiction study 'The Crime of Punishment' (1931) and also influenced two of her eight adult novels, 'The Dark Duty' (1931) and 'The Valiant Wife' (1933). Her final work was a children's book 'The Devon Treasure Mystery' (1939).

Margaret Wilhelmina Wilson died on the 6th October 6, 1973.