| Title | 2. MacDonalds and Kiplings |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Barbara Fisher (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0377.02 |
| Landing page | https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0377/chapters/10.11647/obp.0377.02 |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Barbara Fisher |
| Publisher | Open Book Publishers |
| Published on | 2024-09-04 |
| Long abstract | Alice Macdonald was one of five sisters, four of them remarkable for the men they married or the sons they mothered. Two married famous artists—Edward Burne-Jones and Edward Poynter; one was the mother of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, one the mother of Rudyard Kipling. Alice, the oldest of the daughters of an unconventional Methodist minister, was considered to possess the most sparkling personality, the nimblest mind, and the keenest wit. Despite these gifts, she made the least impressive match, marrying John Lockwood Kipling at the advanced age of 27. Lockwood, who came from a devout Wesleyan family, was an artist, sculptor, and architectural designer of seemingly little promise. Meeting Alice at a picnic at Lake Rudyard, he immediately fell in love, but waited to marry until he had secured an appointment at a school of art in Bombay. Both Alice and Lockwood had artistic temperaments and Bohemian sympathies, but conventional social values. |
| Page range | pp. 33–42 |
| Print length | 10 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
Barbara Fisher graduated from Bennington College with a B.A. and received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in English Literature from Columbia University. For many years, she taught 18th and 19th Century English Literature, mostly at Eugene Lang College, the undergraduate college of the New School University in New York City. She has also been a book reviewer for major U.S. newspapers including the The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, for which she wrote a book column every other Sunday for fifteen years. This is her first book as an independent scholar. She is currently working on a biography of mid-20th Century cultural and literary critic Lionel Trilling.