Ardyth Kennelly
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Ardyth Kennelly (April 15, 1912 - January 19, 2005) was a female American novelist whose books were popular in the 1940s and 1950s.
This once popular but now neglected Mormon novelist has surprisingly little web presence, given the outstanding quality of her first and most popular novel, The Peaceable Kingdom. She was born in the Lane County town of Glenada[citation needed] on the night the Titanic sank (April 15, 1912), and grew up in Glenada, Salt Lake City, and Albany, graduating from Albany High School and from Oregon State College in 1933.
In 1940 she married Dr. Egon V. Ullman of Portland; she was widowed in 1962. She lived for 40 years in downtown Portland where she held occasional salons and hosted diverse gatherings of selected guests. She continued to write without submission for publication; one of her last projects being a play entitled “Last Rites for Barbie.”
Late in life she developed a second career as an artist, specializing in collages and mixed media constructions, with two major exhibits, the first at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery at the age of 84 (approximately 1996). There’s an online record of her second exhibit, a showing of "collages and mixed-media installations" in the Mark Woolley gallery in Portland in August and September of 2000 (The Portland Mercury, Aug 31 - Sep 6 2000 - [1]).
"88-year-old artist Ardyth Kennelly Ullman helps inaugurate Mark Woolley's new gallery with her collages and mixed-media installations."
"Two month, inaugural exhibition of the Woolley satellite space. Featured work by 88-year-old Portland phenom, Ardyth Kennelly Ullman. Through Sept 30."
- NOTE: One of her pieces, a large mixed media collage entitled "Waves and Puddles," is owned by the Multnomah County Library and can be viewed by arrangement(503-223-5186).
Toward the end of her life Kennelly moved to Vancouver to be near her sister, and died there in January 19, 2005 at the age of 92 (see full obituary text below.)
Kennelly's greatest popular success, and arguably her greatest literary achievement, is her impressive first novel, The Peaceable Kingdom. Published in 1949, it introduces us to the household and social circle of a polygamous wife of Swedish extraction living in Salt Lake City at the turn of the century, just before polygamy is repudiated by the Mormon Church. (See full dust jacket text below.)
Kennelly's current obscurity is puzzling and ill bestowed. Her work in "Kingdom" ranks with the best American literature ever produced. A perusal of recent amazon.com reviews (2002 and 2004, [2]) gives some idea of the power of her work to move the modern reader. Her use of language is mentioned, her "gem-like chapters," her ability to "[move me] between belly laughs and tears" and one reviewer adds that "if Mark Twain had been a Mormon woman he would have written this book and I think it deserves to rank with Huckleberry Finn as an American classic."
Contents |
[edit] Career
Kennelly's writing career can be divided into three distinct periods:
- Improvement Era: 1930 - 1936
- Pulp Romance: 1936 - 1940
- Novelist: 1949 - 1956
A full listing of Kennelly's Improvement Era contributions with original text, plus reader commentary and notice of her work's inclusion in Mormon reading courses and study groups can be found in the LDS Library and Mormon Literature Database (see REFERENCES below [3]). Online data on the second period of her career is unavailable beyond the names and publication dates of her stories in two pulp periodicals, All-Story Love Stories and Smith & Street's Love Story Magazine (which became Love Story Magazine in 1952). Five novels are listed in amazon.com, although two are rather rare / expensive and one is currently unavailable. However, copies of The Peaceable Kingdom are easily located and purchased on a variety of online platforms, witnessing the success it enjoyed with contemporary readers (500,000 copies sold).
NOTE: This three-part categorization and associated statements below is based solely on online postings and references. Updates will be posted as they become available.
[edit] Improvement era (1930 - 1936)
Kennelly began her career at the age of 18 with the publication of three poems in "Improvement Era" in 1930 (see REFERENCES, PUBLICATION TIMELINE below). Between September of that year and January 1936, she published a total of 28 poems and five short stories in this LDS periodical. Although the majority of this work is unabashedly sentimental and focused squarely on love and romance, sub themes appear as well, hinting at the insight into mature love, motherhood, death, and the restorative working of faith and nature (including human nature) that are expressed so powerfully in her masterpiece, The Peaceable Kingdom.
For the most part, Kennelly's Improvement Era work is naive and conventional in structure and plot. The poems are almost uniformly about romantic love, and it is clear that Kennelly's experience and insight were limited indeed at this time of her life. It is also clear that she is reaching in her imagination for the breadth and depth of experience she would demonstrate so ably more than a decade later in Kingdom. (Two of the more noteworthy poems appear at the end of this essay; neither is clearly connected to romance.)
In typical Kennelly fashion the stories all end happily; they are more varied in theme however. Only one is focused exclusively on young love; it involves a young man returning from his two year Church missionary work (How Lovely Youth). Another story, apparently quite popular with readers, is about motherhood - step motherhood to be exact - the silent collision and eventual convergence of vastly divergent internal realities of a little girl and her step mom (Some Beautiful Way). Another story involves death and a crisis of faith; given her sub themes in Kingdom it's notable that nature, rather than doctrine, brings about "proof" and resolution (And Afterward Came Spring).
A fourth story (Fire and Song) is, in the words of its author, "a story of Faith. . Faith is Fire, clean and strong and glowing, kindled on hills, sending light through all the darkness and warmth through all cold." She adds this apologia: "I'm nineteen. I tell you because I want you to understand if this tremendous theme is handled clumsily and a little too breathlessly." Indeed, it is handled awkwardly and more than a little too breathlessly, but that is to be expected in a young woman of her era. [To keep things in perspective, read the youthful work of Keats (for example) and note the mawkish sentimentality and ill-expressed eroticism of his early efforts. This will serve as an antidote should you be inclined to discount the mature Kennelly based on the undeniable naiveté of her early work.]
What makes the story of young Mormon converts rejected by family and friends noteworthy is, in fact, its striking contrast with Kennelly's assurance and masterly handling of similar themes (faith, death, and friendship) in Kingdom. Her beginning in Fire may have seemed unpromising, but in this case appearances were deceptive indeed.
If Fire reveals a halting start to Kennelly's quest to illuminate the best and noblest of human virtues, her remaining story (That Day Was Grand, 1935) is an early example of the technique that would so magnificently display them in Kingdom. Like Some Beautiful Way, Grand is told from the point of view of a very young schoolgirl who idolizes a woman whom she considers the epitome of female beauty and perfection - and possessed of that ineffable quality we now term "cool." (In this vein, another Mormon novelist, Orson Scott Card, notes: "Children choose their heroes with unerring stupidity.")
In Grand Kennelly does something that sets it apart from her other Era work. By faithfully reporting the words, thoughts, and feelings of the rapt young acolyte, she slyly reveals beautiful Rose's egotism, low-caste lifestyle and taste, slovenliness, shallow values and poor judgment, and her likely fate should she continue to walk the path she has chosen. Rose is not evil by any means (Kennelly does not appear to believe in human evil, or at least she never dwells on it), but she is dangerous to herself and dangerous to young Laurel through the influence she could so easily exert if not for the watchfulness and wisdom of Laurel's mother and grandmother.
Rose's character is revealed through Laurel's words and the words of others as Laurel reports them. Here Kennelly first finds her natural voice, abandoning the high-minded verbalizations of her noble male / cherished female duo in Fire. Instead, we hear women's everyday colloquialisms and intimate cadences, knowing them directly through their words and actions, just as in real life. Grand shows us in fledgling form Kennelly's ability to make a character vivid, authentic, and endearing in imperfection by reporting a few well-chosen words and thoughts.
[edit] Pulp romance (1936 - 1940)
If the online record can be trusted, Kennelly's pulp career began the year her Improvement Era contributions ended - in 1936. This year saw the publication of her last poem in the Mormon periodical (On A Restless Night see below), and what appears to have been her first mainstream story for All-Story Love Stories (There's No Telling). According to FictionMags Index ([4]) she published a total of five romance short stories in two popular pulp magazines from 1936 to 1940 (All-Story Love Stories, Street & Smith's Love Story Magazine).
It's unfortunate that the stories themselves are lost unless surviving issues containing them can be located. It's a worthwhile effort, but the poor paper quality that pulp periodicals are known for, combined with their great age (sixty-plus years have passed since the stories first appeared) yields a poor prognosis for success.
However, it is possible to gain some idea of the nature of the periodicals themselves by viewing a few surviving examples of cover art for each magazine ([5] [6]).
It is not unreasonable to suppose that Kennelly may have published elsewhere as well, particularly given the dramatic maturing of her style between her last Improvement Era contribution and her first novel, but if so no record is currently available via the internet.
[edit] Novelist (1949 - 1956)
Kennelly's first novel, The Peaceable Kingdom, was published in 1949 and was followed by four more with the last published in 1956. Based on the ease of locating copies for sale on amazon.com, eBay, and other online sources, three seem to have been successful in terms of sales:
- The Peaceable Kingdom, 1949. Kennelly's first and apparently most popular novel (500,000 copies sold). See dust jacket text, list of themes below. [Critical analysis to be developed.]
- The Spur, 1951. A fictionalized treatment of John Wilkes Booth.
- Good Morning Young Lady, 1953. Coming of age novel, fictional but including anecdotes based on the life of Butch Cassidy. See dust jacket text below. [Critical analysis to be developed.]
[edit] Books
[edit] The Peacable Kingdom
1. Motherhood / female power / female friendship
2. Girlhood idealism / fantasy vs. womanhood, reality
3. Nature / God / Life / Faith / Childhood & wonder
4. Marriage / Polygamy
5. Birth
6. Death / grieving & consolation
7. "Prosaic power" - generated by ordinary people, exhibiting characteristic / habitual behaviors, the mystic / healing power of ordinary events
DUST JACKET: THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM, 1949. Houghton Mifflin Company Boston, The Riverside Press Cambridge, Book Club Edition, Copyright MCMXLIX by Ardyth Kennelly Ullman (Jacket by William Barss)
PROMOTIONAL TEXT: FLAPS
This is a story of insight and inspiration, of a great-hearted woman who created something large and moving out of a multitude of little things.
In Salt Lake City in the eighteen-nineties, Linnea Ecklund is the second wife in polygamy of Olaf: she has borne him several children, she struggles to be a good mother, a good friend and neighbor, to carry her full weight in life, and to endure within herself the very difficult battle between love for her husband and jealousy of the first wife, Sigrid. Later, when she has broken for a time with Olaf, she must maintain life for herself and her children. She had earlier trained as a midwife, and turns to it again, and through her experiences we enter even more into the daily, humorous, tragic, and always enduring small lives of the townspeople.
Linnea and her children live through the winter of the diphtheria epidemic, isolated, snowbound. "Out of the main stream of life, with nowhere to go, no one to see, in a lost pocket of the white world, in the Lord's vestpocket, Linnea with her four children had ease and joy. . . Towards the last they ran out of nearly everything but flour, and yet it was a time to look back on and say, we was snowed in, lots of kids died with diphtheria, they died like flies, we couldn't stick our nose out the door, and the funny thing is, we was happy as a bunch of larks."
The book is long, it is blunt, naturalistic, but the breath of life blows through, infuses, permeates it. As a narrative of marriage, death, childbirth, a town of characters bound together in love and endurance, it brings finally into the modern novel what Whitman brought to poetry: faith in existence, in the indestructibility of the human spirit."
PROMOTIONAL TEXT: BACK
Ardyth Kennelly lives in Portland, Oregon, and has thousands of relatives who are Swedish, Irish, and Norwegian. Her mother was born into a Mormon family in Salt Lake City, and the author herself grew up in Salt Lake City and Oregon's Willamette Valley. She attended Oregon State College, and in 1940 was married to Egon V. Ullman, a Portland doctor.
Miss Kennelly is five feet nine and a half inches tall, and it took her quite a while to get used to it. Now she finds that it is very handy for reaching things on the top shelf, hanging curtains, and wearing what she describes as "ployish" clothes. "I like to keep house, cook, and all that," she says. "I like to dance. I love almost all poetry from Chaucer to Elizabeth Bishop. Every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas I read Dickens. But best of all, I like writing. I fiddled with poetry, and tried short stories, and wrote letters, and took as much trouble over them as if they had been some serious work. I was afraid to write a novel because I didn't know how. Finally I wrote The Peaceable Kingdom to find out."
READER REVIEWS: THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM - AMAZON.COM [7] Reader Reviews below are for a paperback edition published by University of Oregon: University of Oregon Press (July 2004). ISBN 0-87114-306-2
An Exceptional Book, December 1, 2004
L.C. (Reno, NV): I first read this book more than 20 years ago and the memory of it has haunted me (in a good way) ever since. Set in Utah in the late 1800's, shortly after the Morman Church had repudiated polygamy, the story is told from the perspective of the second wife of a polygamous marriage. The book is wise and funny and heartfelt. It moved me between belly laughs and tears (and isn't a day with both laughter and tears bound to be memorable?). If Mark Twain had been a Morman woman he would have written this book and I think it deserves to rank with Huckleberry Finn as an American classic.
A treasure too valuable to lose, August 27, 2004
Janet Hilliard "Herb of Grace Cottage" (Escondido, CA United States): I happened on Ardyth Kennelly's books at a library 35 years ago. I re-read each of her five novels every few years. I have been concerned that her works would disappear. ("Up Home" and "The Spur" are difficult to find on the used book market). How wonderful to learn that Kennelly's first novel has been reissued. I hope "Up Home," "Marry Me, Carry Me," "Good Morning Young Lady" and "The Spur" will also be back in print soon. "Peaceable Kingdom" is the tale of a young Mormon second wife. Her story emerges in gem-like chapters, each one of which could stand on its own as an essay or short story. This book is a lovely reading experience.
Pleasant surprise..., November 30, 2002
A reader: Like the other reviewer, I just happened upon this book on the shelves and was surprised at how much it moved me. It is the story of the 2nd wife (and brood) in a Mormon, polygamous marriage near the turn of the century. The author's use of language creates vivid characters and anecdotes. I wish more people knew of this book.
Peace has been put into words, February 1, 2002
Deanna King (Chicago, IL): I don't remember how I came upon this book, it was there on my bookshelf. I have found it very enjoyable. The writer is speaking with words. I can almost hear her. It is nice to read a book about life and know that in 2002, things may change, but things will always remain the same. Children are born, people die, love, hate, and laugh. Pride and Joy remain the same, through the ages and with any religion.
[edit] The Spur
DUST JACKET: THE SPUR, 1951. Julian Messner, Inc., New York, ASIN: B000CSCOSG.
Described on the 1951 dust jacket as “an absorbing drama, combining history and fiction” the novel is a plausible and highly compelling fictionalized interpretation of the early life and last days of John Wilkes Booth.
PROMOTIONAL TEXT: excerpt from BACK FLAP
The Spur was inspired by her insatiable curiosity about “the man who killed Lincoln.” The controversial explanations about Booth in both contemporary and modern accounts only led to more reading, then research of her own, and finally with enough notes to “fill a bushel basket,” the story of John Wilkes Booth came to life on paper.
The novel ends with a Bibliography with 34 citations including period and contemporary works of biography and history of varying levels of credibility (one of the books is by Booth’s sister, Asia Clarke). Most center on Booth, his conspirators, and the trial; but general works treating the Civil War and its cultural setting are included as well.
A preliminary comparison of her depiction of Booth’s last hours with that of a modern author, James L. Swanson (excerpted in Smithsonian, June 2006) indicate that her treatment was carefully researched and supported by verifiable facts. Kennelly accurately describes Booth’s movements beginning with the Ford’s Theatre assassination and ending at the Garrett Farm on April 26, 1865. Moreover, her description of Booth’s last few hours in chapter 24 (pp. 287 – 296) matches almost point for point with that of Swanson with few discrepancies. Dramatization appears confined to her interpretation of the relationship between Booth and Herold, with fairly mild characterizations of others present at the time.
Kennelly’s depiction of characters is what one familiar with her work would expect – charitable but clear-eyed. She offers no outright contradiction to the Mudd’s testimony that they did not recognize Booth, merely presenting the evidence and the jury’s conclusion that they were telling the truth (almost inconceivable). She does not believe that Mrs. Surratt was guilty despite her conviction and hanging. She makes no excuse for Booth’s crime nor the egoistic self delusion that she believes led to it, but denial of human compassion to a suffering creature would betray her vision and she does not fail us.
In Booth, we are shown a shallow, ignorant individual whose grandiose notions of his own significance and stature are humbled by days of physical and emotional hell, as he walks the final steps of his chosen path into the inescapable manifestation of his insensitivity and viciousness. Her veneration for Lincoln is unabashed and forthright, but neither in the burning tobacco barn nor on the bloodstained boards of the Garrett porch does Kennelly surrender to vulgarity or vengefulness. With impartial compassion her book notes the paths two bullets took and the loss that followed.
[edit] Good Morning Young Lady
DUST JACKET: GOOD MORNING YOUNG LADY, 1953. Houghton Mifflin Company Boston, The Riverside Press Cambridge, Book Club Edition, Copyright 1953 by Ardyth Kennelly Ullman, Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 52-10909
PROMOTIONAL TEXT: FLAPS
Ardyth Kennelly has returned to Salt Lake City, the scene of her first novel, The Peaceable Kingdom. But Good Morning, Young Lady is not a Mormon story.
It is the story of Dorney Leaf, who comes to Salt Lake City as a girl of fourteen to live with her much older sister Madge and Madge's spoiled and selfish daughter. Through the magic of her warm and loving nature Dorney transforms the drudgery of her daily existence into a dream world where anything might happen and lives for the day when the famous outlaw Butch Cassidy will come and carry her off on his black horse. To Dorney all things are possible, so it is wonderful but hardly surprising that she should find herself working for the Queen of Salt Lake City, that the handsome young professor from New York should constitute himself her friend and benefactor or even that her hero, Butch Cassidy, should come to Madge's little house to find her.
This is a remarkable novel, a romantic fantasy played against a background as rich and warm and down to earth as any of Dickens'. Ever since there have been books to read, people have read and re-read the story of Cinderella, the waif who won the prince's heart. But Dorney is more than a Cinderella; she is an eager, appealing, and very human girl, and no one can read about her without loving her.
The story of Dorney and her family and friends is fiction. But Butch Cassidy is a character in the history of Utah, an outlaw in the tradition of Robin Hood. And this story is no more fantastic than the many legends still told about him.
PROMOTIONAL TEXT: BACK
Miss Kennelly's first book, The Peaceable Kingdom was published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1949. It was a Literary Guild selection and sold a half million copies.
[edit] References
- All-Story Love Stories. Periodical; a continuation of Munsey’s Magazine. 584 issues (2 unconfirmed). [8]
- Amazon.com - The Peaceable Kingdom 1949 edition record with reader reviews. [9]
- Card, Orson Scott. 1985. The Fringe, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October. Finalist, Hugo and Nebula awards. Reprinted in The Folk of the Fringe, Tor, 1989.
- Improvement Era. LDS periodical; 1987 - 1970 (id / pw, 14 day trial available). [10]
- LDS Library - list of Ardyth Kennelly references (id / pw, 14 day trial available). [11]
- Mormon Literature Database - novels by Ardyth Kennelly (id / pw, 14 day trial available). [12]
- OSU Alumni Association (osualum@oregonstate.edu). Via 8/23/06 email, Courtney Ball, Alumni Programs Specialist, Corvallis, OR 97331-6303 confirmed Kennelly’s 1933 graduation from Oregon State University.
- The Oregonian, 1/30/2005 (as appearing in the Albany Democrat-Herald, 1/31/05). Obituary summarizes Ardyth Kennelly Ullman’s life events with partial citation to Portland literary historian Brian Booth.
- Smithsonian, June 2006. “An Assassin’s Final Hours,” James L. Swanson pp. 66 – 74. Excerpt from “Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer,” William Morrow, February 2006.
- Street & Smith’s Love Story Magazine. From 3/1931 – 2/1947 under this name; Love Story Magazine after 1952. [13]
[edit] BIBLIOGRAPHIES
A Literary History of the American West, Literature Association Western, Dec. 12 1986. TCU Press, ISBN 0-87565-021-X. Google Books (Aug 2006): Under "Mormon Novels" p. 859: The Peaceable Kingdom, Up Home. "Content restricted" on p. 856.
Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History, Roger D. Launius, Linda Thatcher, July 1 1998. University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0-252-06731-2. Google Books (Aug 2006): p. 292 Ardyth Kennelly ("content restricted"). Synopsis: This exciting volume uses closeup looks at nineteen Mormon dissenters to focus on the variety of religious sentiment within the Mormon church and to explore how it has encouraged divergent ideas from the early 1800s through modern times.
Ted Malone's Scrapbook: Favorite Selections From Between the Bookends, Ted Malone, May 1 2005. Kessinger Publishing, ISBN 1-4191-1607-X. Google Books (Aug 2006): Ardyth Kennelly "Before" starts p. 92. [book ordered]
Lust for Fame: The Stage Career of John Wilkes Booth, Gordon Samples, Sep 1 1998. McFarland & Company, ISBN 0-7864-0586-4. Google Books (Aug 20006): Bibliography p. 193, Ardyth Kennelly, The Spur. Synopsis: This is the only book on Booths ten tumultuous years on the stage, with a wealth of rare period illustrations. The book evaluates his performances through newspaper reviews and the recorded opinions of his contemporaries; it also separates Booth the actor from Booth the assassin. One of the appendices is an exhaustive chronology of all of his performances.
[edit] OTHER
KENNETH B. HUNSAKER, Utah State University. “In 1949 Ardyth Kennelly united several short sketches into the novel The Peaceable Kingdom. This work and its 1955 sequel, Up Home, relate the rather traditional activities of a woman living in Utah as a plural wife.” http://www2.tcu.edu/depts/prs/amwest/html/wl0849.html
Lavina Fielding Anderson, Weber Studies, Fall 1993, v10.3 – Critical Essay. “Other Mormon women authors of merit from this time include Ardyth Kennelly, particularly her fine novel of polygamy, The Peaceable Kingdom (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), with its strong, salty narrator, Linnea. Unfortunately, Kennelly has not received the critical attention her works merit, but a "rediscovery" is almost certain to occur in the wake of increased attention to her contemporaries, Sorensen and Whipple.” http://weberstudies.weber.edu/archive/archive%20A%20%20Vol.%201-10.3/Vol.%2010.3/10.3Anderson.htm
(Unknown) Dust Jacket, The Spur, 1951, back flap. Ardyth Kennelly grew up in Salt Lake City, and a Mormon household there provided the background for her recent best-selling novel, The Peaceable Kingdom. She attended Oregon State College preparing to be an English teacher, but since 1940 when she married a Portland doctor, Egon V. Ullman, she has successfully combined the life of a homemaker with writing poetry, short stories and novels. She insists that she enjoys keeping house, from scrubbing the woodwork to cooking unusual dishes. Her husband shares her interest in writing – he writes poetry, medical papers and is now working on the story of Corti the Italian anatomist who first discovered the eardrum. (Remainder of text in section above, “The Spur.”)
June Mikkelsen, Library Administration Office, Multnomah County Library. Response to email query sent 9/19/06: Ardyth Kennellly Ullman's piece, a mixed media collage, was a gift to the Library through The Library Foundation. It's titled "Waves and Puddles," and was given to the Library in 1998. It was at the Library Administration Building for a short time, but because of its large size, we do not have any wall space large enough to accommodate it in any of our buildings. It's currently being stored by The Library Foundation. The patron could contact Faith Danforth at The Library Foundation to make arrangements to see it. Her number is (503) 223-5186.
[edit] Publication timeline
NOTE: Links to Improvement Era are id/ pw restricted; 14 day trial available.
1996 – ART – Elizabeth Leach Gallery (approximate date based on The Oregonian obituary, 1/30/05).
2000 - ART - The Gold Door (?) - Collages / mixed media installations, Mark Woolley Gallery, Portland OR, USA.
1956 - BOOK - Marry Me, Carry Me - Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, ASIN: B000CSSDRC. [14]
1955 - BOOK - Up Home - publisher unknown, ASIN: B0007E4BW2 (sequel to The Peaceable Kingdom). [15]
1953 - BOOK - Good Morning, Young Lady - Houghton, Mifflin Co., ASIN: B0007DYTO8. (Link with dust jacket pic: [16])
1951 - BOOK - The Spur - Julian Messner, Inc., New York, ASIN: B000CSCOSG. [17]
1949 - BOOK - The Peaceable Kingdom - Houghton, Mifflin Co., ASIN: B000F2WTDE. (Link with reader reviews: [18])
1940 - STORY - Last Christmas - Street & Smith’s Love Story Magazine, Dec 21 1940. [19]
1937 - STORY - My Love is Here for Tea - All-Story Love Stories, Jan 30 1937. [20]
1936 - STORY - Now That, At Night - All-Story Love Stories, Mar 28 1936. [21]
1936 - STORY - Song About Love - All-Story Love Stories, Mar 7 1936. [22]
1936 - STORY - There's No Telling - All-Story Love Stories, May 30 1936. [23]
1936 - POEM - On A Restless Night - Improvement Era, v. 39 no. 1, Jan 1936. [24]
1935 - POEM - On A Long Day - Improvement Era, v. 38 no. 12, Dec 1935. [25]
1935 - POEM - There Wasn't Much - Improvement Era, v.38 no. 10, Oct 1935. [26]
1935 - POEM - Last Straw - Improvement Era, v. 38 no. 7, Jul 1935. [27]
1935 - STORY - That Day Was Grand - Improvement Era, v. 38 no. 5, May 1935. [28]
1934 - POEM - Beyond Belief - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 9, Sep 1934. [29]
1934 - POEM - For the Dark Stranger - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 7, Jul 1934. [30]
1934 - POEM - Date Tonight - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 7, Jul 1934. [31]
1934 - POEM - These Things - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 6, Jun 1934. [32]
1934 - POEM - Inside Story - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 4, Apr 1934. [33]
1934 - STORY - Some Beautiful Way - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 2, Feb 1934. [34]
1934 - POEM - On the Back of an Envelope - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 2, Feb 1934. [35]
1933 - STORY - How Lovely Youth - Improvement Era, v. 36 no. 10, Aug 1933. [36]
1933 - POEMS - Sixteen Sings (set of 10 poems) - Improvement Era, v.36 no. 6, Apr 1933. [37]
1933 - POEM - I Want Peace - Improvement Era, v. 36 no. 5, Mar 1933. [38]
1932 - STORY - Fire and Song - Improvement Era, v. 36 no. 12, Oct 1932. [39]
1932 - POEM - Reincarnated - Improvement Era, v. 36 no. 10, Aug 1932. [40]
1932 - POEM - Conversation On A Still Afternoon - Improvement Era, v. 35 no. 6, Apr 1932. [41]
1932 - STORY - And Afterward Came Spring - Improvement Era, v. 35 no. 6, Apr 1932. [42]
1932 - POEM - The Color of Yesterday - Improvement Era, v. 35 no. 5, Mar 1932. [43]
1931 - POEM - Song to Your Coming - Improvement Era, v. 34 no. 7, May 1931. [44]
1930 - POEM - The Party - Improvement Era, v. 34 no. 2, Dec 1930. [45]
1930 - POEM - Wish - Improvement Era, v. 33 no. 12, Oct 1930. [46]
1930 - POEM - Shower - Improvement Era, v. 33 no. 11, Sep 1930. [47]
ON A RESTLESS NIGHT Ardyth Kennelly, 1936
I pray a poem, sweet God, I pray a poem!
Let it come to me on little silk-smooth feet,
Let it creep up beside me in the dark
Where I toss with wide eyes and aching throat,
And touch me with its hands.
Let it be quiet and soft and small.
Let it be still and bright.
Let it come to me, through moonlight,
Through air that is white and burning. . .
I could sleep then, God. I could sleep.
REINCARNATED Ardyth Kennelly, 1932
She has borne tall silver vases
On her head, and her arms were ivory.
She has sung in gardens, and her mouth
Was a red flower in the dusk.
She has danced, and her feet were
Two white doves in the sand.
Her body was a white thing - a poem
Of whiteness like a lily. . .
She has had love flung about her
Like a cloak of peacock feathers.
She has lain still in the dark
With candles at her head and feet.
Today she bought some yellow dye
For her bedroom curtains.
Today she priced Russian pottery
And searched through a cookbook
For a new recipe for fruit cake.
Today she washed her hair
And dried it in the sun.
[edit] Obituary
The Oregonian, 1/30/2005. Transcribed 9/10/2006 from a photocopy from the Albany Democrat Herald 1/31/2005 posted on 8/29/06 by the Linn Genealogical Society of Albany OR.
Ardyth Kennelly Ullman April 15, 1912 – January 19, 2005. Longtime Portland author and artist, Ardyth Kennelly Ullman, died Jan. 19, 2005; at age 92 in a Vancouver, Washington nursing home. She moved to Vancouver in recent years to be near her sister, Marion Kennelly Brownell.
“Ardyth Kennelly Ullman was one of Oregon’s cultural treasures,” according to her friend Brian Booth, a Portland lawyer and literary historian. “She was one of the last of a celebrated group of Pacific Northwest writers with national reputations in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Then, in her 80’s, she emerged with a new career as a remarkable artist.”
Known professionally as Ardyth Kennelly, she was the author of a number of best selling popular novels of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Her first book “The Peaceable Kingdom” (1949), which portrayed life among the Mormons during the years after Brigham Young’s death, was a literary guild selection and sold over half a million copies.
Ms. Ullman’s other books include “The Spur” (1951), based on the last six days of the life of John Wilkes Booth, “Good Morning Young Lady” (1953), a Literary Guild selection involving the outlaw Butch Cassidy, “Up Home” (1955), and “Marry Me, Carry Me” (1956). The New York Times said that her characters “all but march off the pages,” and the Saturday Review of Literature pointed out that, “no one who reads (Ardyth Kennelly) can resist the temptation for reading aloud some of the passages that are a sheer delight.”
Ms. Ullman was born in the tiny Lane County town of Glenada on the night the Titanic sank, April 15, 1912. Her parents were James D. Kennelly and Lula Amanda Olsen. She grew up in Glenada, Salt Lake City and Albany. Ms. Ullman graduated from Albany High School and attended Oregon State College and Reed College. She wanted to be an English teacher, but began writing short stories in the 1930’s and turned to the novel in the 1940s. Since childhood Ms. Ullman listened to her maternal grandmother tell stories of her life as wife number two in the household of a Utah Morman, and she drew on these for several of her books.
In 1940 she married Dr. Egon V. Ullman, who had been her doctor when she attended Oregon State College. He died in 1962.
Late in life Ms. Ullman turned her talents to creating stunning collages and mixed media constructions, some of which were based on characters and themes from literary history, the classics and the street life of downtown Portland. At the age of 84, she had her first exhibit at Elizabeth Leach Gallery, followed, several years later, by an exhibit at Mark Woolley Gallery. The Oregonian described her art as “obsessively made, beautifully conceived and utterly unique,” as well as “free-associative, darkly comical and often whimsically sexy.” The Portland Art Museum and Multomah County Library each have one of her works.
Ms. Ullman was a private person and she had been out of the public limelight for many years. However, she remained active with a myriad of interests and talents. Friends looked forward to her brilliant conversation and her colorful letters that drew on her vast knowledge of history, literature and popular culture. Her downtown Portland apartment where she lived for 40 years, was filled with her colorful and idiosyncratic works of art, one of which was a throne. Here she held occasional salons and gatherings of carefully selected guests from all walks of life.
Long after her last published book Ms. Ullman continued writing works that she never submitted to publishers. “My agents and publishers have all died,” she said. One of her last projects was a play entitled, “Last Rites for Barbie.” Unfortunately, blindness ended both her writing and artistic careers. She told her sister, “Oh God, let me write again, that is all I want.”
In addition to her sister, Ms. Ullman is survived by many nieces, nephews, a lovely and extended family, and many others who fell under her magical spell.
NOTE: From Liane Brakke-Pound, Assistant to the Chief Curator, Portland Art Museum in response to an email query sent 9/19/06: Ms. Ullman did donate a Diane Arbus print to the Portland Art Museum, however, we do not own one of her works. The Arbus print was donated in 1982 and is described as "Three midget friends sit in a living room and look directly at the camera".
http://www.biblio.com http://books.google.com/books?q=ardyth+kennelly&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=wp EMAIL - P
Edwardsville Intelligencer, The (Newspaper) - February 22, 1950 ...from Thumbnail sketches of new books on our shelves: . . . These books are all available in the library. Best sellers for the week are: Fiction. "The Egyptian" by Mika Waltari; "The Peaceable Kingdom" by Ardyth Kennelly, "Dinner at Antoine's" by Frances Keyes; "Mary" by Shol- em Asch; "The Big Fisherman" by Lloyd C. Douglas. NOTE: A daily newspaper in Illinois based in Edwardsville. Circulated in Edwardsville, Glen Carbon and nearby rural areas. Founded in 1862 and was acquired by The Hearst Corporation in 1979.
Harold K. Guinzburg, founder of Viking Press and The Literary Guild inducted into the Publishing Hall of Fame in 1988. Source: http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history/Ja-Lo/Johnson-Publishing-Company-Inc.html
Oregon State University Famous Alumni: http://alumni.oregonstate.edu/famous/index.html
